A new study has found that autophagy plays an important role in activating hair follicle stem cells and keeping the hair growth cycle going. By boosting autophagy, rapamycin improved hair growth in mice and in a human hair organ culture.
Full story:
Source Paper:
Results: Autophagy in hair follicle stem cells (HFSC) was highest during the transition from telogen to anagen. Inhibiting autophagy with 3-MA led to early entry into catagen and prolonged telogen, whereas Rapa promoted autophagy and hair growth. Autophagy activated HFSC by increasing the expression and activity of HFSC lactate dehydrogenase (Ldha), thereby transforming HFSC metabolism into glycolysis. Inhibition of Ldha expression counteracted the effects of autophagy.
Conclusions: Autophagy activated HFSC by promoting the transition from HFSC metabolism to glycolysis, ultimately initiating the hair follicle cycle and promoting hair growth.
‘Rapamycin (1.6 mM) induces hair regeneration. Male mice were shaved on postnatal day 43 and treated topically every other day. Photographs were taken on day 37 post-treatment.’
I’ve probably seen around 100 papers on rapamycin now. I’d say 95 of those resulted in positive results for whatever they were testing. You could throw darts at a dartboard to test any metric of human healthspan and almost certain to find rapamycin improves it.
The sad thing is that negative results are less likely to be published for anything. However, more efficient mitochondria are likely to make any issue better.
I think it is a general problem with research. In a sense there is an inherent systemic pressure for positive results. When it comes to rapamycin and hair i think rapamycin helps.
This is strictly anecdotal, but my cat was shaved almost to the skin for his ultrasound. The hair started growing back, but slowly. After he had been on Rapa for a couple of weeks, his fur suddenly started growing back very quickly, and is now very thick. This could just be his winter coat coming in, or maybe I’m seeing what I want to see, but the results seem to confirm the mouse study
Hmmm. This suggests an experiment. First, you need a sufficient number of cats. Let’s say 20 controls and 20 to receive the rapamycin. They should be shorthair cats…easier to shave.
Second; begin by herding each group of cats toward the lab….oh, never mind!!
So it seems that topical rapamycin, metformin and alpha-KG are all fairly effective on the mice and also have some effect on human follicles.
I’m tempted to try all 3 concurrently but then, if it helps, I won’t know what is best. Has anyone tried any of these yet?
Possibly a daft question here, the study shows results in 11 days. Assuming this was also effective in human HFSCs would we be looking at 11 days, longer or shorter?
