Gene injected into baldness reserach

Mutation in hairless girl also could lead to immune system repairs By Robert DavisUSA TODAY (4/8/99)" Researchers have linked a genetic mutation to hair loss and are trying to grow hair by injecting healthy gene into follicles of hairless mice, says a report out today...The gene mutation was discovered by the same Columbia University team that last year found the first human gene associated with human hair loss....They dubbed that first gene " hair-less."..." Gene No. 2 to us is as exciting because it proves we're on the right track," says Angela Christiano, lead researcher on the study.... "Like 'hairless,' this gene must turn something on. The question is what gets turned on next."...The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, came from the team's investigation into the condition of two sisters in a small village in southern Italy. The sisters were born hairless and with severely depressed immune systems....One died within a year, but the other survived after getting a bone marrow transplant from their healthy brother... The team obtained blood samples from the family and hunted for the "whn" or "nude" gene, which when mutated causes mice to be born hairless. The same genetic mutation existed in the girls.... In mammals without the nude gene, there is either no hair or just a few stunted strands that rarely emerge from the skin....But the hair follicles, the chambers in the skin where the hair grows, remain healthy.

And these follicles can produce hair when a healthy version of the nude gene appears....Christiano and her colleagues currently are conducting gene therapy experiments; they're introducing a functional nude gene into hair follicles of nude mice in an attempt to grow hair.... If the experiment works in mice, the gene will be injected into the Italian girl's hair follicles.... Similar treatments for male pattern baldness would require a better understanding of other genes at work in that hair loss process.

Christiano estimates that 100 genes are involved.... "These two genes are the master switches," she says. "These are the big- picture genes."... Now her team will try to "find out what they control downstream and put all the puzzle pieces together."...The findings also may lead to better treatments for autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, conditions that arise when the immune system attacks the otherwise healthy body... The team found that the nude gene is linked to the thymus, a small organ above the heart where the immune system's soldiers, called t-cells, are taught to fight foreign cells... In the thymus, young t-cells either learn to rid the body of intruders or are killed themselves... Neither of the girls was born with a normal thymus, which apparently prevented the immune system t-cells from maturing. This left them with faulty immune systems... The thymus can degenerate during childhood, leaving some people vulnerable to autoimmune disease later in life... Christiano and other researchers hope the nude gene some day will be used to rejuvenate the organ to re-educate the t-cells in people with autoimmune disease... "Part of the fascination with this gene is it's been around for like 500 million years doing different things, before there was a thymus and before there was hair," Christiano says.... "We think it has a lot more biological functions than just these two.

to the top