Paul Kemp: Making Hair Loss History
Paul Kemp’s introduction to the issue of baldness came as a rude awakening while getting a haircut at the age of 20. “I remember my hairdresser looking down and saying ‘Oh my God, you’re going bald on top'”, recalls Kemp, now in his 60s. This discovery not only dismayed him, but it also marked the beginning of a lifelong professional interest in the science of hair loss and how to stop it. Kemp is the co-founder and CEO of HairClone, a company that is developing an experimental cell therapy treatment for male pattern baldness. Their tagline: “making hair loss history”.
Male pattern baldness affects around 85% of men by the age of 50 and losing hair can be a source of anxiety and low self-esteem. While there are drugs, transplants, and strategic hairstyles available to manage hair loss, nothing exists to reverse the process. However, that could be set to change.
In recent years, scientists have discovered that baldness has its origin in the loss of specialized skin cells called dermal papillae. These cells are crucial for regulating hair thickness, growth, texture, and possibly even color. But in some men, these cells are progressively killed off by dihydrotestosterone, the hormone responsible for male body maturation during puberty.
“You have about 1,000 of these dermal papilla cells per hair,” says Kemp. “The more dermal papilla cells, the thicker the hair shaft. When you get down to around half that number, you’ll notice the hair thinning.”
Baldness implies a lack of hair, but technically, bald heads are not hairless. As dermal papilla cells are lost, the follicle shrinks, and the hair shaft it produces becomes finer and spends longer in the dormant state. Eventually, the hairs become so fine and grow so slowly that they are effectively invisible.
HairClone aims to reverse this miniaturization process by allowing people to bank 100 or so youthful follicles or follicles from parts of the head that still have hair. After being taken from a patient’s head, the follicles are placed in a deep freeze container at -150°C. As and when required, the hair can be thawed, and the dermal papilla cells can be cloned and multiplied in the laboratory to provide an almost unlimited supply.
The hope is that injecting these cells back into the scalp will plumpen the follicles and return hair to a more youthful state. Around 200 clients have already banked their hair, although none have been treated yet. The efficacy of the approach has not yet been established in a clinical trial, but HairClone is in the process of establishing quality controls that will allow it to manufacture cells to clinical standards. Once that is achieved, doctors will be able to offer the treatment on an experimental basis to patients who could benefit.
One of those who have banked their hair is Tommy Smith, a 65-year-old planning consultant. Smith initially began losing hair in his 20s, possibly as a side effect of powerful acne medications. He had a hair transplant in 1988, but experienced further hair loss in 2015. Smith sees hair cloning as an insurance against future hair loss, stating, “The concept of having hair follicles stored to address potential hair loss in the future is very encouraging… I also think this could provide young men who have a hair loss history in their family the opportunity to address future hair loss in a much less painful and complicated manner.”
Hair surgeons and their patients often face a dilemma when planning a transplant. Once transplanted, follicles retain their original identity, so they need to be taken from a safe zone of the scalp that won’t go bald in the future. Transplanting before the hairline stabilizes can lead to further transplants, and there’s a question of whether the hairline will recede so far that there won’t be enough hair to cover the whole head. “You’re chasing a moving target,” says Kemp.
However, scientists believe it may be possible to predict a man’s eventual hairline by analyzing genetic markers inside dermal papilla cells. This could help men make more informed choices about the most appropriate treatment. “There’s always been this clear pattern of male hair loss, but no one’s really explained why it’s like that,” says Dr. Claire Higgins, a lecturer in tissue regeneration at Imperial College London and a scientific advisor to HairClone. In a recent paper, Higgins described evidence that a man’s hairline could be traced back to the earliest stages of embryonic development.
Kemp and his colleagues are working to develop a test, based on the gene expression of dermal papilla cells, to establish whether a part of the scalp is balding, destined to bald, or will always retain its hair. “Ideally, you want to be able to map the head,” he says. “We’re finding genetic differences between the hairs and we’re in the preliminary phases of doing that.”
Kemp, who has lived with hair loss for years, is comfortable with his appearance, but he believes treatment is not for everyone. “At this stage, I’m used to looking like this,” he says. “But when I was 20, had they said there’s something we can do about that, I would’ve done it. Our targets are younger people.”
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