Scientists have discovered that existing FDA -approved drugs used for cancer and rheumatoid arthritis have the capability to be used as a cream to stimulate hair growth, showing great promise for a future baldness cure.
Angela Christiano, together with his colleagues at Columbia University Medical Center, made the discovery when they were able to grow hair in laboratory mice that they treated with the medicine for five days. Significant hair growth was observed within 10 days.
They used two drugs - tofacitinib (Xeljanz), used for rheumatoid arthritis, and ruxolitinib (Jakafi), a blood cancer treatment drug. These drugs are known as JAK inhibitors.
Researchers discovered that when JAK inhibitors were applied as a topical solution directly to the skin, instead of oral intake, they triggered hair growth by activating cells in hair follicles, CBS News reports.
"The surprise was when we started using the drugs on alopecia areata patients, when we used them topically the hair grew back much faster and more robustly than it did orally," said Christiano, according to NBC News.
The discovery has also been shown to work on human hair follicles but has yet to prove that it can cure male patterned baldness.
It works by inhibiting a family of enzymes inside hair follicles that are suspended in a resting state, effectively "waking" the hair, the Daily Mail reports.
