HEALTH UPDATE: hair-raising mice point to cure for baldness

Few things strike fear into the human heart like a receding hairline, but a path-breaking study released on May 16 points for the first time to a genetically-based remedy for hair loss.
In experiments on mice, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania showed that the skin of wounded animals can naturally regenerate the follicles from which individual hairs grow.
They also identified a gene that is essential for normal hair development, and were able to stimulate or stop hair growth by boosting or inhibiting the protein's activity at a molecular level, opening the way to non-invasive therapies. The results have stunned many scientists, who have long assumed that mammalian hair follicles were a non-renewable resource.