WCD 2019 | Exciting time in alopecia: new tools of genetics to understand the basis of the disease

At the WCD2019 the lecture of Angela Christiano about “The Molecular Basis of Novel Therapies for Alopecia”

“It is an exciting time in alopecia because we are beginning to use new tools of genetics to understand the basis of the disease”, said Prof. Angela Christiano. In her lab at Columbia University, she studies three different kinds of alopecia: standard of male/female pattern of hair loss, alopecia areata (which is an autoimmune form of hair loss), and scar and cicatricle alopecias (which affect many people in a growing concern). “Sometimes it is easy to see that alopecia is inherited from parent to child and down through family, but that’s unusual. Most forms of alopecia are what we call “complex disease”, where there can be an aggregation of patients in a family, but not from parent to child, instead from an aunt, a niece, a nephew, or a grandparent, just to give some examples”, declared Prof. Christiano. “What we found is that most of the time this disease is not only influenced by genetics but also by environmental factors, which now allows us to address some of the environmental triggers that can lead to these disorders in the families”, added Prof. Christiano. But for now, alopecia cannot be classified, as it affects different groups not so evenly.