Robot to help treat baldness

The British Government is providing about $A4.7 million to a Cambridge-based company that is building a robot to help treat baldness.

Biosciences firm Intercytex aims to perfect a treatment that involves taking hair follicles from the back of the neck, multiplying them and replanting them where they are needed.

The company says it plans to use the money to develop a robotic system to speed up the painstaking process of multiplying the hair cells before they are replanted.

"The technology is challenging. No-one has done this before," Intercytex chief executive Nick Higgins said.

"We take cells responsible for hair growth, multiply them and then inject them in the head. We tease out the cells responsible for growing a new hair.

"The challenge is to make sure they grow thick enough and quick enough so they are cosmetically acceptable."

The most common form of baldness is triggered by the male hormone, dihydrotestosterone, which causes follicles to shrink and hair to thin before disappearing altogether.

Intercytex's research is now in intermediate phase II testing after having safely been trialed on a handful of volunteers.

The hair is taken during a 30-minute operation under anaesthetic and replanted three weeks later after the cells have had time to grow.

- Reuters