A Breakthrough On Baldness

From one small hair, a whole new approach to treating baldness may have sprouted, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin.

For the first time ever, British researchers have successfully transplanted cells taken from a male hair follicle, put them into the arm of a woman and grown an actual hair.

"What these cells are doing is going into the recipients' skin and telling the recipient skin to organize a hair follicle," says Colin Jahoda, a biologist at Britain's Durham University.

Dermatologist Angela Christiano, who does genetic research on balding in mice, is hailing it as a breakthrough. "This study shows for the first time that you can actually take hair follicle cells from one individual and actually transplant them into a second individual who is not immunologically compatible," she says.

Dr. Robert Bernstein performs thousands of hair transplants every year. In current procedures the entire follicle is permanently removed from the back of the head and relocated to the front.

Bernstein says the new discovery means people could one day manufacture their own hair cells for transplant, becoming their own donors. "Most individuals have a permanent donor supply so if you can multiply that even a few fold almost everybody could end up with a full head of hair," he says.

Commercial applications for hair cell transplants are a long way off, but for the estimated 30 to 40 million Americans suffering from hair loss and spending billions of dollars to reverse it, it's one of the most promising advances to date.