HAIR LABS

Directions Website

Hair Labs is a London research and formulary house studying the biology of hair ageing: greying, shedding, signalling, structure, and restoration.

28/09/2026

Greying doesn't always mean the pigment stem cells are gone. Many are stranded in the wrong part of the follicle.

Each time a hair regrows, these cells travel down into the follicle, where a signal switches them on and they mature into the cells that make colour. Some then travel back up to the bulge and revert to a resting state. Down, up, and down again, cycle after cycle. Almost no other stem cell in the body works this way.

Over many cycles, more of them stop coming back down. They accumulate in the upper bulge, out of reach of the signal. The hair still grows. It just grows without colour.

Wider research on greying points to three pressures on these cells: stress, fading signals in the follicle, and oxidative damage.

SUN ET AL · NATURE · 2023

24/09/2026

When hair goes grey, the assumption is that pigment cells have died.

A 2023 study from NYU Langone changed that picture. Melanocyte stem cells — responsible for continuously restocking the hair's pigment supply — don't disappear. They get stranded. Unable to migrate between the follicle's compartments, they lose contact with the cues that keep them functional. Left in place without the signals they need, they stop renewing pigment entirely.

The cells are still there. The system has lost coordination, not cells.

11/09/2026

Hydrogen peroxide is a normal metabolic byproduct, and catalase is the enzyme that clears it. In grey hair follicles, that clearance has largely failed.

Wood et al. measured millimolar H₂O₂ in grey and white scalp hair shafts, alongside near-absent catalase and methionine sulfoxide reductase A and B — the repair system that reverses oxidative damage to methionine residues. With that repair blunted, oxidation reaches Met374 in the active site of tyrosinase, the enzyme that makes melanin, and enzyme function falls away. Colour is lost gradually because the follicle can no longer make new pigment.

Grey versus pigmented follicles compared at one time point; decline with age is inferred, not tracked.

WOOD ET AL., FASEB J 2009

05/09/2026

Tyrosinase, the enzyme that starts the melanin pathway, carries two copper ions in its active site. Without copper it cannot work.

Whether that mechanism explains real-world greying is a separate question. Fatemi Naieni et al. compared 66 people under 20 with premature greying against 66 age- and sex-matched controls. Serum copper was significantly lower in the greying group (90.7 vs 105.3 µg/dL, P = 0.048). Zinc showed no difference. Serum iron was significantly higher in the greying group — the opposite of what a general nutrient-deficiency story would predict. Copper was the only one of the three that moved the way the mechanism suggests.

Case-control design, single centre. Association, not causation. Serum copper is not a measure of copper available inside the follicle, and no study has linked the two.

FATEMI NAIENI ET AL., BIOL TRACE ELEM RES 2012

04/09/2026

Melanocyte stem cells don't always run out. A 2023 Nature study from NYU Langone found that many get stuck — alive, but no longer moving between the follicle compartments where pigment gets made.

Sun et al. showed these cells normally shuttle between the hair germ and the bulge, dedifferentiating back to a stem state each cycle. That plasticity is what keeps the reservoir stocked. Across repeated hair cycles a growing share fail to return to the hair germ and remain in the bulge, where WNT signalling is low and the pigment programme is never triggered. The follicle produces no colour — not because the reservoir is empty, but because the cells are in the wrong place.

Live-imaging study in mice. Human translation not established.

SUN ET AL., NATURE 2023

13/07/2026

Hair ages two ways: it loses colour, and it loses density. Both start at the follicle.

WHAT WE KNOW

Greying: the pigment stem cells don't vanish. They fade and stall.

Thinning: in early loss the follicle isn't gone. It shrinks and goes dormant, stem cells intact.

WHAT'S COMING

A topical that flips a metabolic switch to wake dormant follicles. PP405, now in trials.

Hair follicles grown from human stem cells in a dish. Lee et al, Nature, 2020.

HOW TO SLOW IT

Don't smoke

Manage stress: it accelerates greying. Ashwagandha is shown in trials to lower stress and cortisol.

Fix low iron, B12, copper, vitamin D

Keep hair out of the sun

Lower inflammation

Eat for antioxidants: colourful plants, real protein

The realistic gain is slowing the pace.

Follow for the science of hair ageing as it breaks.
Research-led hair biology at hairlabs.ai

08/07/2026

A discovery from UCLA, now in human trials:

Balding does not kill the follicle. It puts it to sleep – and the sleeping follicle can be woken.

In a 2025 trial, a once-daily topical called PP405 woke dormant follicles in men with hair loss. About a third saw hair density rise by more than 20% over eight weeks, against none on placebo.

How it works traces to a discovery reported in Nature Cell Biology in 2017. Flores and colleagues showed the stem cells that build a new hair are still present in a resting follicle, only quiet, and that they run on lactate. Push lactate up by blocking a mitochondrial pyruvate carrier, and dormant follicles re-enter the growth cycle. PP405 is built on that switch.

It is still investigational, not approved.

Dormant is not the same as dead – and that distinction is where this field is now pointing.

Reported from the literature. Research-led hair biology at hairlabs.ai

[Flores et al · Nature Cell Biology · 2017]

06/07/2026

A discovery from Nagoya University: grey can begin as a fading signal, not a dead cell.

Keratinocyte stem cells signal to pigment stem cells through endothelin to keep hair its colour. Reporting in Antioxidants in 2024, the Nagoya team traced greying to that signal weakening with age – and, in a lab model built to grey like humans, found the antioxidant that held the signal and slowed the greying. Two similar flavonoids tested alongside it did nothing.

A signal that is only fading is one you may be able to hold.

Reported from the literature. Research-led hair biology at hairlabs.ai

[Iida et al · Antioxidants · 2024]

02/07/2026

A single hair is a timeline. As it grows it lays down a record of what the body was going through, and that record stays in the fibre for months.

In 2021, researchers at Columbia (Rosenberg et al., eLife) profiled pigment along individual hair shafts and read them almost like a chart, matching lighter, greying stretches to periods of psychological stress. Poorer nutrition and disrupted sleep are separately linked to weaker, more damaged fibre. Under the microscope you can see the difference: smooth, tiled cuticle where things were steady, lifted and cracked scales where they were not.

Going grey and going brittle are not only about age. Part of it is the record of how you have been living.

Research-led hair biology at hairlabs.ai

24/06/2026

You protect your skin from the sun. The cells that colour your hair never get the same thought.

In 2009, researchers found greying follicles fill with hydrogen peroxide while the enzymes that normally clear it fade. The hair quietly bleaches itself from the inside, and the build-up jams tyrosinase, the enzyme that makes pigment. Sunlight adds to that oxidative load, which is why UV sits on every researcher's list of things that push greying along.

Going grey isn't only your genes. The oxidative part, you can support.

Research-led hair biology at hairlabs.ai

Address

96 Kensington
London
W84SG

Website

https://linktr.ee/hairlabsai

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when HAIR LABS posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Want your business to be the top-listed health & beauty business in London?