Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School have developed a new treatment to reverse hair loss caused by the autoimmune skin disease alopecia areata.
This new microneedle patch, published in Advanced Materials, introduces immunomodulatory molecules to teach T cells not to attack hair follicles, resulting in hair regrowth at any age.
Autoimmune skin diseases are a group of conditions that occur when the body’s immune system attacks healthy skin cells, causing inflammation, damage, and other skin problems.
Alopecia areata, which affects more than 6 million people in the United States, occurs when the body’s own T cells attack the hair follicles, leading to hair loss.
The developed microneedle patch is made of hyaluronic acid cross-linked with polyethylene glycol and can be painlessly applied to the scalp, releasing drugs that help rebalance the immune response at the site while simultaneously controlling the progress of treatment. You can also collect samples that will be used to monitor the situation. .
In a study of mice treated every other day for three weeks, researchers found that the patch aided hair growth and significantly reduced inflammation in the treated area while avoiding systemic immune effects in other areas of the body. I discovered it.
They also found that treated mice had more regulatory T cells in the area and maintained hair growth for several weeks after treatment ended.
Additionally, the researchers transplanted human skin into mice with humanized immune systems, which induced the proliferation of regulatory T cells and reduced inflammation.
The researchers believe this approach could also be used to treat other autoimmune skin diseases such as vitiligo, atopic dermatitis and psoriasis, and are currently in the process of launching a company to further develop the technology. I’m working on it.
Natalie Artzi, principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Science and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, commented: “This approach silences the entire immune system and reduces inflammatory symptoms, but leads to frequent flare-ups. It also increases susceptibility to infections, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.”
