Wound Healing and Hair Growth
Monday, April 27th, 2009
Hair Growth with wound healing technique in animal models: Dr. Parsa Mohebi's research at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute
A new article was published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Internal Medicine Research (2009 Mar-Apr;37(2):583-6) “A very rare complication: new hair growth around healing wounds.” This is aligned with Dr. Mohebi’s research on wound healing and gene therapy techniques on the growth of hair in animal models at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute.
The article discusses a finding on a patient who grew hair around a healing wound near Sun ZY, et al, from the department of plastic surgery, first affiliated hospital, Guangxi Medical University in Nanning, China.
The authors of this article discuss a case in which active hair growth occurred around a wound after the healing of a wound. This is described as a rare phenomenon. This phenomenon in humans has not previously been reported in their literature. They proposed that after the epidermis and hair follicles have been damaged by wounding, it is possible for them to naturally heal and repair if provided with an appropriate chemical and physical micro-environment. They propose that their hypothesis may inspire new thinking in the management of hair loss, tissue engineering and the regeneration of other organs.
I did research on hair growth as an effect of wound healing when I was performing research in the wound healing laboratory of Johns Hopkins Medical Institute. After observing the healing of a wound, some of our gene therapy techniques could stimulate the growth of hair in mice. I focused on hair growth itself and our study was confirmed with multiple studies of that kind from 2005-2006. Dr. Cotsarelis at the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues were the first group to publish the effect of wound healing on hair growth through activation of molecular pathway WNT.
The reports on this type are emphasizing that hair restoration through tissue engineering, hair multiplication and gene therapy might be a reality in the future and maybe even sooner than what we thought before.
