Hair Loss Research

Hair today, gone tomorrow. Hair again soon? Maybe, thanks to breakthroughs in hair- loss treatments.

There’s been a revolution in biology. Armed with powerful new tools, scientists are learning how to read the complex chemical languages of the body, including how to coin new treatments for hair loss.

Like the cure for cancer, those new treatments aren’t nearly ready for prime time. But they’re coming, promises George Cotsarelis, MD, director of the Hair and Scalp Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

“In the last 5 to 7 years there has been a boom in the understanding of hair loss,” Cotsarelis tells WebMD. “We’ve made great strides at the level of basic research. Now the question is how we can convert these findings into clinical benefits. Those kinds of leaps really take decades.”

The great leap would be to grow new hair on bald heads. But smaller steps aren’t that far away.

Why do we care about a cure for baldness? Look around you. Hair loss is extremely common, it usually happens when the normal process of hair growth gets disrupted.