Japanese Firms Team Up To Fight Baldness With Stem Cell Cure
Giant strides to prevent and cure baldness are being made in medical labs around the world. The latest announcement comes from Japan’s largest research organization RIKEN, which has teamed up with two Japanese companies, Kyocera and Organ Technologies, to develop a cure based on regenerative medicine. The companies are targeting 2020 for commercialization.
They are not the only ones going down the regeneration route. Earlier this year, scientists at Sanford-Burham Medical Research Institute in California, for instance, made a similar announcement citing similar methods. Meanwhile, Japan cosmetic maker Shiseido has been working with RepliCel Life and Sciences in Canada to develop their own regenerative process and aims to introduce a treatment as early as 2018 for a fee of 100,00 yen ($1,000).
In Japan some 18 million people suffer from hair loss, while in the United States, it is more than three times that number—men outnumbering females by more than two to one. So depending on the cost and effectiveness of the new treatment, there should be no lack of patients.
Hair follicles are the sheaths of cells and tissues that surround the roots of our hair, providing it with nourishment. With the exception of our skin, hair follicles are the only organ we know of that regenerates themselves repeatedly after birth thanks to the work of the stem cells associated with them. Read More…….(http://www.forbes.com/sites/jboyd/2016/07/13/stem-cells-to-make-hair-today-gone-tomorrow-a-thing-of-the-past/#427700e23cc5)
Article by John Boyd
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