U-M scientists trigger new hair growth in mice

Updated 1:00 PM May 19, 2003

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U-M scientists trigger new hair growth in mice

By Sally Pobojewski
Medical School Communications

U-M graduate student David Van Mater knew something strange was going on when he noticed stubble on the shaved skin of experimental mice in his laboratory. Instead of the tumors he originally had expected to see, the mice were growing hair.

Van Mater had stumbled on the discovery that beta-catenin, a signaling protein involved in embryonic development and several types of cancer, also triggers changes in adult mouse hair follicles that lead to the growth of new hair.

The discovery by Van Mater, a graduate student in the Medical School's Medical Scientist Training Program, and U-M scientists Dr. Frank Kolligs, Dr. Andrzej Dlugosz and Dr. Eric Fearon was published in the May 15 issue of Genes & Development.

"Other researchers have shown that beta-catenin and other genes in the Wnt ("wint") pathway are important for normal development of hair follicles in embryos and after birth," says Dlugosz, an associate professor of dermatology in the Comprehensive Cancer Center. "What's new about our study is the finding that a brief activation of beta-catenin in resting hair follicles could be enough to trigger the complex series of changes it takes to produce a normal hair."

The original purpose of the research study was to learn how the Wnt signaling pathway and beta-catenin are connected to cancer development, says Fearon, the Emanual N. Maisel Professor of Oncology in the Cancer Center. "Beta-catenin carries signals from growth factors called Wnts to the cell's nucleus," Fearon says. "If beta-catenin expression in the cell isn't adequately controlled and regulated, it changes normal patterns of gene expression. This can lead to several types of cancer, especially colon cancer."

The study used genetically altered mice developed in the U-M Transgenic Animal Model Core. By adding a packaged set of genes called a construct to fertilized mouse eggs, U-M researchers created a new strain of transgenic mice with an inducible form of beta-catenin in their skin cells and hair follicles.

"Our findings suggest some potential strategies for inducing hair growth, but it is premature to think these results will lead to new approaches for treating common male-pattern baldness," Dlugosz cautions. "Many hair follicles in bald and balding men are greatly reduced in size, so merely reactivating hair growth would not produce a normal hair. Also, activation of beta-catenin in the body would need to be tightly regulated, since uncontrolled beta-catenin activity can lead to tumors of hair follicle cells or tumors in other sites, such as the colon, liver or ovary."

The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Co-author Dr. Frank Kolligs, a U-M former post-doctoral scholar working in Fearon's laboratory, is now at the University of Munich.

U-M scientists trigger new hair growth in mice

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