Chinese scientist finds possible cure for hair loss

 A 42-year-old Chinese scientist has discovered a potential way to help bald men regain their hair through genetic repair.

Genome editing technique has been selected as one of the 10 ground-breaking techniques in 2016 by MIT Technology Review.

"Although the science is currently futuristic, this technique, middle-aged men with bald heads can probably regain their hair through genetic repair," Han Chunyu, an associate professor from Hebei University of Science and Technology in north China's Hebei province, told China Youth Daily.

The technique has been named NgAgo, a DNA-guided genome editing, which is an unusual finding in comparison with the mainstream RNA-guided genome editing.

Besides the discussions about Han's finding at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, experts said the finding's potential, which has received attention all across the world after being published in Nature Biotechnology on May 2, is expected to surpass the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which is recognized as a favorite for the upcoming Nobel Prize.

CRISPR-Cas9 technology, the trendiest technology nowadays, helped its discoverers win the Breakthrough Prize in Life Science- a deluxe Nobel Prize-in 2015. And in 2015 the team won the Citation Laureates, a list of candidates considered likely to win the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.

Instead of CRISPR-Cas9 technology, Han's NgAgo finding reportedly has more advantages, and one of them is that it does not cause cancer unlike CRISPR-Cas9 technology that could.

Han's five-member team at a laboratory in Hebei University of Science and Technology cut costs by using discarded beverage bottles in the laboratory and struggled under a debt of more than 300,000 yuan ($45,870).

Image Credit: China Daily