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Brace yourself—this may sound like the start of a Frankenstein movie. A new experiment using discarded infant foreskins from circumcision procedures at Columbia University Medical Center may be the key behind hair loss treatment, AFP reports.
This method could be more effective than current baldness remedies using drugs and hair transplants, according to the New York Times. Angela Christiano, a professor at Columbia University Medical Center, headed the preliminary study that cultured dermal papilla cells that gave rise to hair follicles. Those follicles were later transplanted to the foreskin and then grafted to the backs of lab mice, which resulted in the growth of human hair in five out of seven of the test subjects. The results also revealed that the hair on the animals matched the DNA of the humans, as reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The foreskin is really quite different [from adult skin], it's more plastic," Dr. George Cotsarelis, chair of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, told The Huffington Post.
Christiano hopes that this experiment will bring her and other researchers a step closer to helping women who are balding, male-patterned baldness, and burn victims. However, this is the just the starting point and they still have a long way to go in adjusting the cosmetic side of this experiment.
"Growing hair, the color, growing it in the right direction, exactly like people would require it... and this is far away," said co-author Colin Jahoda, a professor at Durham University in England, according to AFP.
If baby foreskin on your head doesn't bother you, this might just work.