It also raises hopes of someday spurring the growth of new tissue or even whole organs inside patients, such as cartilage in arthritic joints. You can use a few cells to basically regenerate an entire organ. These cells from the so-called dermal sheath were then transplanted into the forearm of Jahoda's wife. It was longer, thicker and darker than arm hair, but it combined some characteristics of both donor and recipient. Current baldness treatments include hair grafts and certain drugs.
Drugs can slow hair loss or even produce new hair, but only in a limited number of people.
In grafts, hair is lifted from one section of a man's scalp and transplanted whole into a bald spot on his head. However, the process requires a slow, expensive and potentially painful series of operations. The new work suggests the possibility of a quicker procedure with less cutting and the creation of new hair in just about anyone. The cells could be removed from a person's own scalp or, if that person cannot produce good quality cells, they could be collected from someone else. They could then be multiplied through laboratory cloning before being transplanted.