Thanks to Corrig for this post-Intercytex hair cloning

A UK biotechnology firm is developing a robot to grow hair follicle cells for use in treating baldness.

Intercytex has successfully tested a method of removing hair follicles from the back of the neck, multiplying them and then reimplanting the cells.

It now plans to use a £1.85m grant from the government to automate the process of growing the cells, meaning many more people could benefit.

The method could be used to treat male pattern baldness and alopecia in women.

The company, which is based in Cambridge and Manchester, won funding for the project from the Department of Trade and Industry's Technology Programme.

Working alongside The Automation Partnership, which developed the robotic system for storing and growing the cells, it hopes to develop commercial scale production of the hair follicles - also known as dermal papilla cells.

The treatment was initially tested on seven men with male pattern baldness, five of whom grew hair, and is now being tested on a further 20.

During a 30-minute operation, hair follicles are taken from the back of the neck, then grown in culture until they number in the thousands.

They are then injected under the skin where the hair needs to grow back.

The most common form of baldness is triggered by the male hormone dihydrotestosterone, which causes follicles to shrink and hair to thin, before it disappears altogether.

Intercytex chief executive Nick Higgins said in male pattern baldness the area at the back of the neck was unaffected by the hormone.

"We take a very small sample of the dermal papilla cells and then grow them in a special medium until we get ten thousand fold. Then we take a very fine needle and we inject them under the skin and the idea is at each point of injection a new hair will grow.

"The robot does two things - the cell culture growth phase takes about three weeks and involves lots of steps but we can programme it to do all the steps, and it can do 200 samples at once.

"The clever bit is we don't want to give the wrong person the wrong hair back."

He added that they would also be testing the method in cases of alopecia but said it would be about three years before the treatment would be available to the general public.

'Traumatic'

Dr Nigel Hunt, psychologist at the University of Nottingham and spokesperson for Alopecia UK, said hair loss was traumatic, especially for women.

"I'd want to see some results but if this is shown to work it will change things dramatically," he said. "At the moment there's very little that works.

"Hair loss affects people quite badly when it happens but the other thing is that people will try absolutely any treatment they can get their hands on, which in itself is difficult.

"It's important to make sure that people taking part in the trials are aware it may not work."

He added that it would be interesting to see if the treatment worked for alopecia because hair follicles that may appear to be functioning could have something wrong with them.

Science and Innovation Minister Lord David Sainsbury said: "This initiative provides a real opportunity to harness the world class expertise that we possess in the UK and direct it towards the task of wealth creation.

"Biotechnology is of crucial importance in our society. By providing a focus for collaboration and delivery, this partnership should establish British industry as the world leader in this area and an attractive proposition for investors."

This was posted by Corrig from Hairlo