Curcumin Use Reinforced For Hairloss Treatment

Prior studies have shown Curcumin to be a potent inhibitor of TGF-b. This particular study identifies Curcumin as such a reliable inhibitor of TGF-b, termed the Hair Follicle Assassin that it could be used in an assay system designed to evaluate TGF-b promotion/inhibition, facilitating the screening of other agents for promoting hair growth, based upon their TGF-b inhibition properties alone.

There is already human data showing orally consumed Curcumin stimulates hair growth in older men with long standing AGA, when combined with Resveratrol. These effects are enhanced with new Curcumin analogues, that are significantly more bio-available.

Arch Dermatol Res. 2009 Mar 11. 

A cell-based for screening hair growth promtimg agents.

Huh S, Lee J, Jung E, Kim SC, Kang JI, Lee J, Kim YW, Sung YK, Kang HK, Park D.

Biospectrum Life Science Institute, 101-701 SK Ventium, 522 Dangjung Dong, Gunpo City, 435-833, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea.

Androgen-inducible transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta1) derived from dermal papilla cells (DPCs) is a catagen inducer that mediates hair growth suppression in androgenetic alopecia (AGA). In this study, a cell-based assay system was developed to monitor TGF-beta1 promoter activity and then used to evaluate the effects of activated TGF-beta1 promoter in human epidermal keratinocytes (HaCaT). To accomplish this, a pMetLuc-TGF-beta1 promoter plasmid that expresses the luciferase reporter gene in response to TGF-beta1 promoter activity was constructed. Treatment of HaCaT with dihydrotestosterone, which is known to be a primary factor of AGA, resulted in a concentration-dependent increase in TGF-beta1 promoter activity. However, treatment of HaCaT with the TGF-beta1 inhibitor, curcumin, resulted in a concentration-dependant decrease in TGF-beta1 expression. Subsequent use of this assay system to screen TGF-beta1 revealed that HaCaT that were treated with apigenin showed decreased levels of TGF-beta1 expression. In addition, treatment with apigenin also significantly increased the proliferation of both SV40T-DPCs (human DPCs) and HaCaT cells. Furthermore, apigenin stimulated the elongation of hair follicles in a rat vibrissa hair follicle organ culture. Taken together, these findings suggest that apigenin, which is known to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumor properties, stimulates hair growth through downregulation of the TGF-beta1 gene. In addition, these results suggest that this assay system could be used to quantitatively measure TGF-beta1 promoter activity in HaCaT, thereby facilitating the screening of agents promoting hair growth.