Donald Trump, in answer to persistent claims that he wears a hairpiece, recently explained how he achieved his extravagant, spun-sugar style without the aid of artifice. After washing his hair with Head & Shoulders and letting it dry naturally, the American property developer and TV personality combs it “a little bit forward and back”. “No,” he insists, “it isn’t a comb-over and it definitely isn’t a toupee.”
Mr Trump’s sensitivity shows that hair loss is a delicate subject. It is also a scientific enigma that has defied 40 years of research. This week, however, researchers announced they had finally managed to grow human hair in the laboratory. By culturing a particular class of skin cells in clumps, Professor Angela Christiano of Columbia University Medical Center and Professor Colin Jahoda of Durham University were able to induce the production of new follicles.
Since hair loss results when shrinking follicles are not replaced by fresh ones, the technique was immediately hailed as a cure for baldness and a revolution for the global multibillion-dollar industry founded on surgical treatments for hair loss. Instead of transplants that relocate follicles from the back of the scalp to the front, future treatments may be able to use a person’s own cells to create new hair shafts directly on the scalp.