The story was published by the Regrowth web site on Nov. 20, 2001 with the following headline:

DNA Shampoo May Help Bald Men

According to a report from Ananova, the Max Planck Institute has claimed that it has come out with a DNA therapy shampoo that will grow hair on balding men.

Unfortunately most of the facts of this story are wrong and misleading.

1. The story referred to on Ananova.com was published a year ago on 19th December 2000 and is not a new story.

See full story at http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_149709.html

2. The story by Ananova did not say that Max-Planck has claimed to come out with a DNA therapy shampoo. The story as reported by Ananova said that "bald men may soon be able to use a DNA shampoo to grow a healthy head of hair."

This was in reference to a shampoo being a possible means to apply the gene altering protein that the researchers at Max-Planck had discovered.

3. The story on Ananova itself is inaccurate since there is no shampoo that's close to being developed and it will not contain DNA.

These are the facts of the events surrounding the discovery by Max-Planck researchers and its implications for hair loss sufferers.

On November 24 2000, researchers at the Max-Planck immunobiology institute in Freiburg Germany announced that they had succeeded in identifying the method of operation of an important mechanism for hair formation. They identified a protein switch that regulates the activity of numerous genes that carry the information for Keratin, the protein-structure of the hair. The institute stated that the research will lead to new ways for both stimulating and retarding unwanted hair growth.

See full story at http://www.hairlosshelp.com/html/maxplanck.cfm

The important thing to know is this discovery is still years away from becoming a product, and most likely it will lead to compounds to stop hair growth, rather than treating hair loss.

This was clarified in these statements issued by the Max-Planck immunobiology institute.

Tuesday, November 28, 2000

Thank you for your interest in our work.

The information recently publicised in the media concerns our research into the molecular basis of the structure and the regulation of hair growth. We have made substantial progress in the characterization of regulatory factors that govern these processes, providing the basis for the development of new substances for the treatment of hirsutism and hair loss. At present, no clinical evaluation including human subjects takes place. However, after promising results in laboratory tests and animal studies were are transferring this knowledge into a commercial enterprise for further development. The first substances may not reach the market before 2005/2006.

Thomas Boehm
Department of Developmental Immunology
Max-Planck-Institute for Immunobiology

In the second statement issued after the media hype which led to people believing that there is hair loss product in existence, the institute went to great lengths to clarify the press release so that people would not misunderstand its implications.

Dear Madam, dear Sir,

Thank you for your interest in our work.
The information recently publicised in the media concerns our research into the molecular basis of the structure and the regulation of hair growth. We have characterized regulatory factors that govern these processes. This information may be exploited in the future for the development of new substances for the treatment of unwanted hair growth.

Such substances are not available for treatment at the moment and need to be developed in a commercial setting. At present, no clinical evaluation including human subjects takes place.

Unfortunately, the way in which this information has been publicised is no accurate reflection of scientific facts. Enclosed, please find a list of published research communications; the most recent ones concern the function of the Whn transcription factor in the control of hair keratin synthesis; our primary interest with the Whn transcription factor is however its role in the immune system.

Thomas Boehm
Department of Developmental Immunology
Max-Planck-Institute for Immunobiology

The final word about the discovery and its implications for hair loss comes from a well known genetic researcher.

"From the biological standpoint, there is no obvious rationale for how manipulating the nude gene could be used as a target for hair growth, since it is involved in hair shaft keratinization, and has nothing to do with cycling, miniaturization,etc, all the usual suspects to target for hair loss (ie, if a follicle can only make a vellus hair, increasing its rate of keratinization would not be predicted to do much other than to make vellus hair grow faster)...it does however, make sense for hirsutism, since if you could 'slow down' keratinization, one could envision a way to slow hair regrowth, for example, like vaniqa is thought to do."

So there is no DNA shampoo and it's unlikely that it will ever become a treatment for hair loss, but it may end up as a treatment to slow or stop unwanted hair growth.