New research has identified a potential way to reverse graying hair and treat skin pigment disorders. By studying stem cells in mice, scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City have found the molecular pathways responsible for creating the color of skin and hair. Their findings could one day lead to cosmetic treatments that restore graying locks to more youthful colors such as brown, blond and red. The research may also be useful for developing drug candidates for people with vitiligo, a disease that causes skin to lose its color and leads to blotchy white patches.

The researchers conducted a series of experiments on stem cells to investigate the biological process at work in pigmentation. They found that a certain signaling pathway – known as EdnrB – interacts with other pathways, in particular the Wnt signaling pathways, which in turn causes the proliferation of melanocyte, stem cells involved in the earliest stage of skin and hair pigmentation.

When the researchers bred mice to have EdnrB pathway deficiencies, the rodents experienced premature graying of their fur. “The mice that normally had black hair turned into grayish mice.

They looked like old people, with gray hair”, they said. Conversely, when they stimulated the mice’s EdnrB pathways, it produced a 15-fold increase in melanocyte stem cell pigment production, which caused hyperpigmentation in the mice. The researchers made small wounds on the animals and noticed that the skin was much darker when it began to heal. Finally, when researchers blocked the mice’s Wnt signaling, it slowed melanocyte growth and resulted in unpigmented gray hair. Mice with black fur became more gray.

This finding suggests that targeting the Wnt pathway may be one way to reverse gray hair.

Moreover, “if scientists can eventually find ways to activate those signaling pathways in humans with vitiligo, the melanocyte stem cells could migrate to the surface of their skin and re-pigment it”, they explained.

FIRGER, Jessica. Disponível em: <http://www.newsweek.com>. Acesso em: set. 2019. Adptado.