UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified the cells that directly give rise to hair as well as the mechanism that causes hair to turn gray – findings that could one day help identify possible treatments for balding and hair graying. “Although this project was started in an effort to understand how certain kinds of tumors form, we ended up learning why hair turns gray and discovering the identity of the cell that directly gives rise to hair,” said Dr. Lu Le, Associate Professor of Dermatology with the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern and member of the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine. “With this knowledge, we hope in the future to create a topical compound or to safely deliver the necessary gene to hair follicles to correct these cosmetic problems.”

The researchers found that a protein called KROX20, more commonly associated with nerve development, in this case turns on in skin cells that become the hair shaft. Scientists may be closer to developing a cream to cure baldness or stop hair from turning gray, according to a recently published study.The study conducted by UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas said the scientists made the discovery by accident while researching how certain cancer tumors form.Researchers said they found that a protein called KROX 20, commonly associated with nerve development, turned on in skin cells that become the hair shaft.The cells produce a protein called stem cell factor, which was essential for hair color.When scientists deleted the stem cell factor gene in the hair cells of mice, their fur turned white.When scientists deleted the other protein KROX 20, no hair grew and the mice became bald.The study, published in the Genes and Development Journal, can be read here In the study, when researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, deleted the SCF gene in the hair progenitor cells in mouse models, the animal's hair turned white. Scientists have pinpointed the cells that cause hair to turn gray and to go bald in mice, according to a new study published in the journal Genes & Development. Researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center accidentally stumbled upon this explanation for baldness and graying hairs—at least in mouse models—while studying a rare genetic disease that causes tumors to grow on nerves, according to a press release from the center. The study has found that in mouse models, the hair turns gray without SCF, as age progresses the hair turns to white, and hair growth is arrested without KROX20-producing cells.
The journal Genes & Development publishes research from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in a mouse-model study (which may translate over to humans) alluding as to why hair turns gray and goes bald. The scientists describe a protein called KROX20 which switches on skin cells that become a hair shaft, which then causes cells to produce another protein called stem cell factor. In mice, these two proteins are important for baldness and graying.