Beauty care: Feeling good on the outside
hair loss is one of the negative side effects that has the treatment of cancer, and that makes many people face this therapy is with anguish added . Now, scientists from the University of Manchester (Uk) have found a new way to protect the hair follicle -a small gland whose main function is to produce hair – chemotherapy and thus prevent hair loss as a result of these treatments.
Your data, which is published in “EMBO Journal”, could lead to the development of new treatments that prevent the loss of hair induced by chemotherapy, possibly one of the effects side more psychologically distressing of cancer therapy. The study describes how you can prevent the damage in the hair follicle caused by taxanes, anti-cancer drugs that can cause permanent loss of hair.
The data could lead to the development of new treatments that prevent the loss of hair induced by chemotherapy
To do this, the scientists have exploited the properties of a new class of medications called inhibitors of CDK4 / 6 , which blocked cell division, and that is already part of the calls targeted therapies against cancer.
Talveen Purba , lead author of the study explains: “Although at first it may seem contradictory, we found that the inhibitors of CDK4 / 6 can be used temporarily to stop the cell division without promoting new toxic effects on the hair follicle . When we used inhibitors of CDK4 / 6, in hair follicles of human scalp grown, we check that these were much less susceptible to the damaging effects of the taxanes”.
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taxanes are antitumoral drugs that are commonly used to treat, for example, patients with cancer of the breast or lung. But, they have a side effect that causes a lot of anxiety among patients with breast cancer: the hair loss of long duration. (Thousands of patients in the U.S. are suing currently the pharmaceutical company Sanofi by the lack of warning about the risk of permanent hair loss after treatment with a drug).
The falling of hair is possibly one of the side effects most psychologically distressing to cancer therapy
“A fundamental part of our study was to understand exactly how they responded the hair follicles to chemotherapy with taxanes. We discovered that the cells dividing specialized at the base of the hair follicle are critical for producing the hair into itself and that the stem cells that arise are more vulnerable to the taxanes. Therefore, we must protect these cells of the unwanted effects of chemotherapy, but avoiding that the cancer does not benefit from it”, says Purba.
The team hopes that their work supports the development of medicines for external application to reduce or suspend briefly the cell division in the hair follicles of the scalp of patients receiving chemotherapy to mitigate capillary damage induced by chemotherapy. This could complement and improve the effectiveness of the approaches of existing preventive, that is to say, devices of cooling of the scalp.
The researchers stress that more work is needed in this field, unfortunately infrafinanciado of medicine against cancer, where patients have waited so long to see real progress in the pharmacologic prevention of hair loss.
we found that cells dividing specialized in the base of the hair follicle are critical for producing the hair into itself and that the stem cells that arise are more vulnerable to the taxanes
“despite the fact that the taxanes have been used in the clinic for decades, and are known to cause hair loss, only now are we beginning to ‘scratch’ the surface of how damaging the hair follicle is human.”
And he added: “we do Not know really p or why some patients show a greater loss of hair than others despite receiving the same drug dose , and why certain chemotherapy regimens and combinations of drugs have much worse outcomes than others.”
And he concludes: “we Need time to develop approaches such as this to not only prevent hair loss but also promote the regeneration of the hair follicle in patients who have already lost the hair due to the chemotherapy.”
