E questa è l'ipotesi di un tizio su un blog:
Withfield was doing his Phd on the Hepatitis C Virus p7 ion channel; vaccine development, biophysics, structural biology and drug inhibition studies, one of his test mice unexpectedly got all hairy, probably something to with ion channels, the same way that minoxidil is thought to work on potassium ion channels but maybe he figured out a better pathway- possibly using the SGK3 pathway which other researchers have noted as essential to hair bulb health.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/bb3/1b4
“• DPhil (PhD) in Biochemistry: Structural and functional analysis of the Hepatitis C Virus p7 ion channel; vaccine development, biophysics, structural biology and drug inhibition studies”
One of minoxidils purported methodology of action was on ion channels. However more recently there has been a discovery that a deficiency specifically of SGK3 in knockout mice creates weak hair follicle bulbs that don’t mature and migrate down into the scalp, creating weak thin hair.
If you do a search of pubmed you can find quite a few references to the SGK family and their effect on potassium ion channels. So yes it may be a bit of a leap but I’m guessing he got an unexpected result in one of his lab mice either by opening up or blocking an ion channel and seeing unexpected growth and is trying to work it up into humans.
