While experts state that cloning hair needs 10 more years to be an effective treatment, we can’t help but wonder. How could Dolly the Sheep be cloned in 1996 (almost 30 years ago!), but in 2025, we still can’t clone a freakin’ hair follicle!?
Isn’t the world conspiring for baldness!?
It does seem counterintuitive that cloning an entire sheep is ‘easier’ than cloning a single hair follicle. Especially since sheep have hair (or wool)! But there are some key biological and technical reasons why hair follicle cloning is more complex than whole-animal cloning.
Fasten-up your seatbelts, ladies and gents – for we’re dipping down the rabbit hole.
Who Was Dolly the Sheep?
Dolly was born on July 5, 1996, at the Roslin Institute, but unlike other lambs who came into the world through the love of a mother and father, Dolly was the first mammal ever cloned from an adult cell.
Scientists watched her every move. Cloning was still an imperfect science, and she aged faster than she should have. She developed arthritis and lung disease, ailments that should have never touched one so young. At just six and a half years old, her body—her little, fluffy body—began to betray her.
On February 14, 2003 —on a day meant for love— Dolly was put to rest, humanely euthanized to spare her from suffering. Dolly’s body was preserved, displayed in a museum as a monument to science.
Dolly Died Prematurely, But Why Should it Happen to Hair?
Dolly died for the sake of science and human progress. She was a half-success, half-failure experiment. But she managed to live for 7 sweet years. So, if a hair follicle could survive even half that long, isn’t it worth it? Wouldn’t it be better than a hair transplant?
The answer is, probably, yes. But cloning hair is significantly more difficult than cloning sheep. And we’re going to see why.
1. A Hair Follicle is a Mini-Organ, Not Just a Cell
A hair follicle isn’t just a simple structure—it’s actually a mini-organ that contains multiple cell types working together. These include:
- Epithelial cells (outer sheath of the follicle)
- Dermal papilla cells (control hair growth)
- Melanocytes (give hair color)
- Stem cells (help regenerate the follicle)
- Blood vessels & nerves (support follicle function)
When scientists clone a sheep, you see, they don’t recreate it piece by piece. Instead, they copy the entire genetic codeinto an embryo, which then grows naturally inside a womb.
In other words, the body automatically assembles everything, including the hair follicles.
But with hair, scientists need to recreate just one functional mini-organ, and this doesn’t happen naturally the way an embryo develops. This leads us to the 2nd point.
2. A Sheep Grows in a Womb, a Hair Follicle Has No “Womb”
Sheep cloning works because the cloned embryo is placed inside a surrogate mother’s womb, where it develops under normal biological conditions.
Hair follicles don’t have a natural “growth chamber” in a lab setting, making it extremely difficult to guide cells into forming a fully working follicle.
3. Hair Follicle Cells Lose Their “Hair-Growing” Ability in the Lab
One of the biggest challenges is when dermal papilla cells (the key cells for hair growth) are removed and grown in a lab:
- They lose their ability to signal hair growth.
- Even though they multiply, they no longer communicate properly with surrounding cells when reimplanted.
In contrast, when a cloned sheep embryo grows inside a womb, its cells naturally self-organize into working tissues and organs—scientists don’t have to manually assemble them.
4. Cloning a Sheep Uses One Cell, Cloning Hair Needs a Complex Interaction
Sheep cloning starts with one single somatic cell (like a skin or udder cell) that gets reprogrammed into an embryo.
Hair follicle cloning needs multiple specialized cells working together, and even if you multiply one type (like dermal papilla cells), you still need the other components to form a functioning follicle.
5. The Hair Follicle’s Microenvironment is Crucial
Even if we cloned hair follicle cells perfectly in a lab, they still need the right conditions to actually grow hair when implanted.
- Blood vessels must nourish
- Nearby skin cells must communicate with them.
- Hormones and growth factors must be just right.
Without these conditions, newly cloned follicles won’t survive or function properly.
Does That Mean There is no Hope for Hair Cloning?
On the contrary, there is. But not the way Dolly was cloned. The road towards hair cloning to end baldness goes through stem cell hair treatments, many of which are already showing very promising results. For example, stem cell hair transplants.
At Dr. Serkan Aygin’s Clinic in Turkey, our medical team is closely following all progress and applying the latest innovations. It’s one of the reasons why Dr. Serkan was declared ‘The Best Hair Transplant Doctor in Europe’ by a medical committee in Paris, in 2019.
The best part of it, is the doctor provides free online medical consultations. So don’t hesitate to reach out!
