Alopecia — or hair loss — when it results from cancer treatment can cause great distress. In the case of treatment with taxanes, hair loss can be permanent. Now, laboratory research has proposed a way that could prevent alopecia due to this type of chemotherapy.

A recent EMBO Molecular Medicine paper describes how scientists investigated the damage that taxanes inflict on human hair follicles.

The researchers found that taxanes are toxic to specialized niches of cells at the base of hair follicles.

These niches contain cells that divide rapidly and are essential for producing hair.

In further experiments, the team found that CDK4/6 inhibitors, a class of drug that halts cell division, can prevent the damage that taxane inflicts in the hair follicle.

In addition, the CDK4/6 inhibitors worked in a way that did not inflict further damage on the hair follicle.

"When we bathed organ cultured human scalp hair follicles in CDK4/6 inhibitors," says lead and corresponding study author Talveen S. Purba, Ph.D., "the hair follicles were much less susceptible to the damaging effects of taxanes."

Purba is a research associate in the Centre for Dermatology Research at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

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