Personalised regenerative cell therapy for androgenic alopecia

A significant proportion of men (70%) and women (40%) around the world experience hair loss at some time in their lives. The primary cause is a disease called androgenic alopecia and this results in affected hair follicles miniaturising, producing thinner, shorter hair shafts, which gives the appearance that the hair is lost. Over 1.8 million people around the world seek surgical and non-surgical treatments for hair loss. This project brings together leading scientists and clinicians who will build on prior pre-clinical and clinical data to develop a treatment that uses cultured cells from a few unaffected hair follicles to rebuild thousands of these miniaturising hairs and permanently reverse the appearance of hair loss.

For many people, hair restoration treatment would have a big impact on their confidence and quality of life. This also presents a huge market opportunity for the UK and it would be the first real indication that a mini-organ structure could be regenerated which would have a much wider impact on strategies used in other regenerative medicines.