She calls her startup Rapunzel, and for good reason: Angela Christiano is working on growing a full head of hair in the lab.
Christiano, a researcher at Columbia University, has a condition known as alopecia areata, which leads to sudden and substantial hair loss. And she’s not satisfied with the treatments on the market: There are just two approved drugs for hair loss, and both are more than 20 years old.
So she’s trying a radically new approach — turning a patient’s own stem cells, which in theory can convert into any type of cell in the body, into hair that could then be transplanted to cover bald patches.
