Gray Hair Holds Clues to Fighting Cancer

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Gray Hair Holds Clues to Fighting Cancer

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AP

December 24, 2004

 

WASHINGTON - No doubt many researchers have gotten gray hair trying to find

ways to defeat cancer. Now a team of scientists says gray hair itself may

yield clues to fighting that deadly disease.

 

It turns out that melanoma, the most dangerous type of skin cancer, involves

melanocytes, the cells that help color hair and skin.

 

So researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston decided to

investigate what happens when these cells become depleted, allowing hair to

go gray.

 

" Preventing the graying of hair is not our goal, " said senior researcher Dr.

David E. Fisher. " What we really want is to come up with treatments for

melanoma. "

 

The scalp contains a reservoir of adult stem cells that provide a continuous

supply of these color-making cells, they found. But as the body ages, these

cells become depleted and sometimes begin to develop in the wrong part of

the hair follicle.

 

The research, published online Thursday by the journal Science, originally

focused on mice. But the team also studied human scalp tissue at various

ages and found a similar pattern of cell depletion.

 

It was known that the pigment was not well transferred into gray hair, but

the actual mechanism had not been understood, Emi K. Nishimura, a co-author

of the paper, said in a telephone interview.

 

She said a gene called Bcl 2 is essential to maintain melanocytes. The

researchers found that when they raised mice lacking this gene the animals

went gray quickly and dramatically shortly after birth.

 

Fisher suggested that people who get gray prematurely may have a mutation of

this gene.

 

The question they now want to answer is why the melanocyte cells begin dying

off as the body ages.

 

These cells are generally good at surviving, being able to live through

ultraviolet radiation - at the beach, for example - that would kill many

other cells. That can be good when people go out in the sun, because the

melanocytes produce pigment that protects the skin.

 

Unfortunately, they retain that ability to survive when they become

cancerous, Fisher said.

 

So, he said, the researchers wondered if they could find a back door to

killing the cells by studying how they die naturally, and that´s what led to

their research on graying.

 

By understanding how genes like Bcl 2 protect the cells, what pathways they

act on, Fisher said, the scientists can look for ways to block that action

with a drug.

 

" We have a number of ideas ... the work is moving, " Fisher said. " I cannot

say that we have drugs in our hands, but we have targets. "

 

The American Cancer Society expects about 55,100 people to be diagnosed this

year with melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, with an estimated

7,910 deaths.

 

Melanoma can be cured when it is detected and treated early, but if the

lesion penetrates deeply into the skin it is often fatal. Sun exposure is a

major risk factor in the disease, which has been increasing in the past few

decades.

 

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Charles

A. King Trust of Fleet National Bank and The Medical Foundation