Going bald? Lab-grown hair cells could be on the way

^{Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash}

Biologists at several startups are applying the latest advances in genetic engineering to the age-old problem of baldness, creating new hair-forming cells that could restore a person’s ability to grow hair.

Some researchers tell MIT Technology Review they are using the techniques to grow human hair cells in their labs and even on animals. A startup called dNovo sent us a photograph of a mouse sprouting a dense clump of human hair—the result of a transplant of what the company says are human hair stem cells.

The company’s founder is Ernesto Lujan, a Stanford University–trained biologist. He says his company can produce the components of hair follicles by genetically “reprogramming” ordinary cells, like blood or fat cells. More work needs to be done, but Lujan is hopeful that the technology could eventually treat “the underlying cause of hair loss.”

We’re born with all the hair follicles we’ll ever have—but aging, cancer, testosterone, bad genetic luck, even covid-19 can kill the stem cells inside them that make hair. Once these stem cells are gone, so...