Advances in Stem Cell-Based Therapy for Hair Loss

Objective: Hair loss is a quite common condition observed in both men and women. Pattern hair loss also known as androgenetic alopecia is the most common form of hair loss that is thought to affect up to 80% of Caucasian men and up to 40% of Caucasian women by age of 70, and it can have quite devastating consequences on one's well-being, including lower self-esteem, depression and lower quality of life. To date there have only been 2 FDA approved medications, minoxidil and finasteride, but their effects are often unsatisfactory and temporary, in addition to having various adverse effects. Stem cell-based therapies have recently received lots of attention as potential novel treatments that focus on reactivating hair follicle stem cells and in this way enhance hair follicle growth, regeneration and development. Stem cell-based therapy approaches include stem cell transplant, stem cell-derived conditioned medium and stem cell-derived exosomes.

Materials And Methods: A combination of following key words was utilized for a PubMed search: cell-based therapy, hair loss, alopecia, hair regrowth; abstracts were screened and included based on the content relevant to hair loss and stem-cell based therapy.

Results: Preclinical research utilizing these approaches has blossomed in the past decade along with a more limited number of clinical studies, overall demonstrating very promising findings.

Conclusion: However, stem cell-based therapies for hair loss are still at their infancy and more robust clinical studies are needed to better evaluate their mechanisms of action, efficacy, safety, benefits and limitations. In this review, we provide the resources to the latest preclinical studies and a more detailed description of the latest clinical studies concerning stem cell-based therapies in hair loss.