It’s surprising how often amazing discoveries are made by accident. Just the other day, I accidentally got mustered in my peanut butter sandwich – and it was surprisingly yummy. Discovering the cure for baldness was most likely a more exciting discovery. It too was a mishap turned hap.But how do you accidentally cure baldness? Well, it takes a good dose of luck and a batch of “astressin-B” peptides.
Salk institute researchers weren’t trying to cure baldness at all. There research wasn’t even hair related. Attempting to reduce stress in mice by blocking a corticotrophin-release factor (CRF) led to a pleasant surprise.
After injecting one set of mice with the receptor blocking peptides, and leaving them alone for a few months, researchers returned to find some pretty happy mice. Were the mice happy because they were relieved of stress, or because they were able to say goodbye to the comb-over. Impossible to say. However, this serendipitous result gives cause for hope to those dealing with baldness.
“Our findings show that a short-duration treatment with this compound causes an astounding long-term hair re-growth in chronically stressed mutant mice,” said Million Mulugeta, an adjunct professor of medicine in the division of digestive diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a corresponding author of the research. “This could open new venues to treat hair loss in humans through the modulation of the stress hormone receptors, particularly hair loss related to chronic stress and aging.”
It’s not unreasonable to think that this peptide could be used in humans. Mice are remarkably similar to us, which is why they’re used as test subjects. The receptors that were blocked in mice exist in our skin. Could this mean that we could soon see a hair-growth cream that actually works? Let’s hope the cost of such a product remains less surprising than the discovery itself.
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