Androgenetic alopecia: combing the hair follicle signaling pathways for new therapeutic targets and more effective treatment options

ABSTRACT Introduction: In the past 30 years, only two drugs have received FDA approval for the treatment of androgenetic alopecia reflecting a lack of success in unraveling novel targets for pharmacological intervention. However, as our knowledge of hair biology improves, new signaling pathways and organogenesis processes are being uncovered which have the potential to yield more effective therapeutic modalities. Areas covered: This review focuses on potential targets for drug development to treat hair loss. The physiological processes underlying the promise of regenerative medicine to recreate new functional hair follicles in bald scalp are also examined. Expert opinion: The discovery of promising new targets may soon enable treatment options that modulate the hair cycle to preserve or extend the growth phase of the hair follicle. These new targets could also be leveraged to stimulate progenitor cells and morphogenic pathways to reactivate miniaturized follicles in bald scalp or to harness the potential of wound healing and embryogenic development as an emerging paradigm to generate new hair follicles in barren skin.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Expert opinion on therapeutic targets

• Publication date

  2019-09-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/14728222.2019.1659779PMID 31456448
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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