| "There is new hope for the follicly challenged. Scientists have found a way to regenerate hair follicles which may lead to a cure for baldness - and a bonanza for its inventors." "By reawakening genes once active only in developing embryos, they have stimulated cells in the skin to grow new hair follicles - promising to turn a polished scalp into a good thick rug." "The discovery promises a solution for the estimated 35 million balding Americans - and millions more in the UK and around the world - who spend $1.5bn (£750m) a year on hair-restoration products, drugs and transplant surgery." "A US company, Follica Inc, has licensed the technology from the University of Pennsylvania, where the discovery was made, in the hope of developing new treatments for hair loss and acne." "The problem has defied the efforts of hair technologists for decades, despite the investment of huge sums of money. The traditional treatment for hair loss has been to transplant hair from another site - normally the back or sides of the head - on to the scalp." "As well as giving a crude result, the technique is limited by the quantity of hair available - there is never enough to do a decent job." "Experiments at the University of Durham in the UK published in 1990 proved that hair cells could be stimulated to multiply in the test tube, but in doing so they lost the capacity to develop into hair follicles. Scientists have been looking ever since for the magic ingredient that would trigger regeneration of hair follicles." "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania believe they may have found it. In experiments on mice they have shown that when a wound heals, instead of forming scar tissue it can be stimulated to regenerate skin complete with hair follicles and oil glands by introducing proteins involved in hair follicle development (known as "wnt" proteins)." "The researchers say wound healing offers a window of opportunity, when the skin is returned to an embryonic state which makes it receptive to the influence of the proteins." "George Cotsarelis, who led the study published in Nature and is a co-founder of Follica, said: "We have found that we can influence wound healing with 'wnts' or other proteins that allow the skin to heal in a way that has less scarring and includes all the normal structures of the skin, such as
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