Salk Institute researchers Jean Rivier and Catherine Rivier were investigating how stress affects gastrointestinal function when they may have found a chemical compound that induces hair growth by blocking a stress-related hormone associated with hair loss. The discovery came entirely by accident. The team was originally studying brain-gut interactions and had been using mice that were genetically altered to overproduce a stress hormone called corticotrophin-releasing factor, or CRF. As these mice age, they lose hair and eventually become bald on their backs, making them visually distinct from their unaltered counterparts. Researchers had developed a chemical compound called astressin-B, which blocks the action of CRF, and they created an animal model of chronic stress by altering the mice to overproduce CRF. Researchers then injected the astressin-B into the bald mice to observe how its CRF-blocking ability affected gastrointestinal tract function. The initial injection had no effect, so the investigators continued the injections over five days. Then they noticed something surprising \u2014 the bald mice regrew their hair. Rivier and colleagues from The University of California, Los Angeles and the Oregon Health and Sciences University have filed for a patent on the compound and plan to set up a company to begin raising money for development and testing.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Salk Institute researchers Jean Rivier and Catherine Rivier were investigating how stress affects gastrointestinal function when they may have found a chemical compound that induces hair growth by blocking a stress-related hormone associated with hair loss. The discovery came entirely by accident. The team was originally studying brain-gut interactions and had been using mice that […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Regrowing hair: Salk researchers may have accidentally discovered a solution","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551,11593],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news","category-no-images"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}