Cancer fighters know that losing their hair is often part of the battle, but Michigan State University researchers have developed a shampoo-like gel that has been studied in animal models and could protect hair from falling out during chemotherapy treatment.

Baldness from chemotherapy-induced alopecia causes personal, social and professional anxiety for everyone who experiences it. Currently, there are few solutions — the only ones that are approved are cold caps worn on the patient’s head, which are expensive and have their own extensive side effects.

Bryan Smith, an associate professor in the College of Engineering and with MSU’s Institute for Qualitative Health Science and Engineering, has developed a gel the consistency of shampoo that he hopes will help protect patients’ hair throughout treatment. When Smith was a trainee at Stanford University, he learned and used a process that inverted the typical engineering process, seeking to objectively identify and completely characterize critical clinical needs prior to solving them.

“This unmet need of chemotherapy-induced alopecia appealed to me because it is adjacent to the typical needs in medicine such as better treatments and earlier, more accurate diagnostics for cancer,” Smith said. “This is a need on the personal side of cancer care that, as an engineer, I didn’t fully recognize until I began interviewing cancer physicians and former cancer patients about it. Once I understood, it became clear to me that better solutions are very important to many cancer patients’ quality of life.”