Gene Therapy May Be Used to Treat Hair Loss

Mice whose fur glows green may be the first step to using gene therapy to treat hair loss, baldness and perhaps even to permanently change hair color, researchers say. They put jellyfish genes into the hair follicles of the mice, which grew fur that glowed fluorescent green under the right light.

“The hair now is glowing green because green fluorescent protein is in the hair shaft,” said Robert Hoffman of San Diego-based AntiCancer Inc., whose company led the study. “We saw lots of green fluorescent hair.”

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hoffman and his colleagues said their experiment involved skin taken from a mouse, treated, and then grafted to another mouse. They need to try it now directly on live mice.

“It’s got a way to go before the market,” said Hoffman, who worked with scientists at MIT and Japan’s Kitasato University School of Medicine.