Scientists say a cure for baldness is coming but here’s why you shouldn’t wait.
By Marvin Valdez
There is still no cure for male pattern baldness. Two drugs, minoxidil and finasteride, slow it down. Everything else, including hair cloning and stem cell therapy, sits in a lab or a regulator’s inbox. BBC Science Focus reports, however, that scientists are closer than they have ever been. Closer is not the same as available.
What Actually Causes Male Pattern Baldness?
Your hair is not falling out. It is shrinking.
“Balding is caused by hair miniaturising,” Dr Paul Kemp, chief executive of the British company HairClone, told BBC Science Focus. “They’re not really lost. They just get smaller and smaller, so that they’re not really visible.”
The blame sits with dermal papilla cells, a cluster of roughly 1,000 at the base of every follicle that decides how thick and how long a hair grows. Dihydrotestosterone, the potent form of testosterone that put you through puberty, kills them off. Cells on the crown die faster than cells at the sides, which is why balding follows that monkish pattern. Around 30 to 50 per cent of men are affected by 50, rising to roughly 80 per cent by 80.
Can You Really Clone Your Hair?
In theory, yes. Healthy follicles are harvested and cryogenically frozen. In the lab their dermal papilla cells are multiplied, then injected back into the thinning scalp. “We can multiply them over a thousand times, so you can get over a million cells from one follicle,” said Dr Jennifer Dillon, HairClone’s head of research.
Unlike a transplant, it can be done before anyone notices you thinning. Banking your follicles is possible now and costs a few thousand dollars. The treatment itself is approved nowhere.
Dr Claire Higgins, a tissue regeneration researcher at Imperial College London, is blunt about the timeline. “Unfortunately, things that have shown promise in the lab have not demonstrated much efficacy in clinical studies, and so the timeframes for a treatment keep changing,” she said.
The products you can buy today carry real risk. In April 2025 the US Food and Drug Administration warned about compounded topical finasteride, the kind sold by telehealth platforms, after 32 adverse event reports between 2019 and 2024. Erectile dysfunction, low libido, brain fog, depression and suicidal ideation. Most reports said the symptoms continued after men stopped using it. Some said they had been told a topical version carried no risk at all.
Bald Is Already Working For Plenty Of Men
So a cure is coming. Probably. Eventually. Expensively.
There is a cheaper option that many men sorted out decades ago. Go bald, boldly, bravely, gracefully and stylishly. Take the clippers.
Source: https://www.dnamagazine.com.au/scientists-say-a-cure-for-baldness-is-coming-but-heres-why-you-shouldnt-wait/
