What do the dermal papilla studies actually show?

Laboratory cell work, reported with the limits of in vitro evidence stated plainly. Cell studies indicate a mechanism; they do not on their own establish a clinical outcome.

Why does the dermal papilla matter so much?

It is where the follicle's fate is decided and where androgen signalling acts — which is why it is the address any topical is trying to reach.

Does Verbascoside Work? What the Cell Studies Actually Show

2026년 8월 17일

By Dr. Susan Lin, MD | MD HAIR | La Cañada Ventures, Inc.

If you've been researching your hair thinning at midnight — and I know many of you have — you've probably typed some version of the same question into a search bar: is there a natural option for hair thinning that actually has science behind it?

You've likely waded through a swamp of answers. Miracle oils with no citations. Blends with proprietary “complexes” that won't tell you what's inside. Confident claims about “blocking DHT” that evaporate the moment you ask for the paper. And underneath it all, the same quiet worry: my part is getting wider, and I don't know what to trust.

So let me do what I always try to do here: slow down, go to the actual biology, and show you what is known, what is being studied, and what is still open. Today's subject is verbascoside, a phenylethanoid glycoside found in lilac — and the reason lilac sits at the center of the MD HAIR formulation philosophy.

I'll also tell you, plainly, about a claim this article used to make and no longer does. That part matters as much as the science.

What Is Verbascoside, Exactly?

Verbascoside — also called acteoside in much of the scientific literature — is a phenylethanoid glycoside: a naturally occurring plant compound built from a phenylethanol unit and a caffeic acid unit joined to a sugar core. It is one of the most widely distributed and most studied molecules in its class, documented across a large number of plant species, including lilac (Syringa vulgaris), mullein (Verbascum species, which gave the molecule its name), olive, verbena, and plantain (Alipieva et al., 2014).

Plants don't make verbascoside for our benefit. They make it for their own defense — as part of their response to oxidative stress, UV exposure, and microbial attack. That defensive role is precisely why the molecule has attracted so much scientific attention: compounds that protect plant tissues from environmental stress often turn out to have measurable biological activity in laboratory models of human tissue as well.

The phytochemistry literature is substantial. Published reviews document a broad pharmacological profile in laboratory and preclinical research, with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity among the most consistently reported properties (Alipieva et al., 2014; He et al., 2011; Korkina, 2007). Verbascoside has also been studied in topical and dermo-cosmetic formulation contexts, where researchers examined both its antioxidant activity and its stability in finished products (Vertuani et al., 2011).

But general antioxidant capacity is a weak reason to build a formulation around a molecule. Hundreds of plant compounds are antioxidants. What made me keep working with this one is a specific, published, controlled study on a specific human cell type — and that cell type is where this article is going.

First, the Context: DHT and the Miniaturizing Follicle

To understand why that cell type matters, you need the pathway. Let's build it from the ground up.

From Testosterone to DHT

Every hair follicle on your scalp lives in a hormonal environment. One of the most consequential molecules in that environment is dihydrotestosterone (DHT) — a potent androgen created when the enzyme 5-alpha-reductase (5αR) converts testosterone into DHT directly in peripheral tissues, including the skin and hair follicle.

DHT is not simply “stronger testosterone.” It binds the androgen receptor with substantially greater affinity than testosterone itself, and in genetically susceptible scalp follicles, that binding sets off a slow-motion program of decline (Randall, 2008).

Miniaturization: The Slow Shrinking of the Follicle

Here is what DHT does to a susceptible follicle over years, not weeks:

The anagen (growth) phase shortens. A follicle that once grew a hair for four to six years starts cycling in shorter and shorter growth windows.
The follicle physically shrinks. Each successive cycle produces a hair finer in diameter, shorter, and less pigmented than the one before.
Terminal hairs become vellus-like. The thick, visible hairs of a healthy scalp are gradually replaced by fine, wispy, nearly invisible ones.
Density collapses gradually. The follicle count doesn't drop dramatically at first — the caliber of each hair does. This is why women typically notice a widening part and a shrinking ponytail rather than bald patches.

This process — follicular miniaturization — is the central event of androgenetic (pattern) hair loss in both men and women.

Type I and Type II: The Two Isoenzymes

Here's a layer of the biology most consumer articles skip, and it's worth knowing: 5-alpha-reductase is not a single enzyme. It exists in distinct isoenzymes, and the two most studied in hair biology are Type I and Type II.

Type I 5αR is expressed prominently in sebaceous glands and skin, including the scalp.
Type II 5αR is expressed in hair follicles (particularly the dermal papilla region), the prostate, and genital skin — and is the isoenzyme predominantly targeted by the pharmaceutical finasteride.

Landmark work by Sawaya and Price, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, measured both isoenzymes — along with aromatase and androgen receptor levels — directly in scalp follicles of women and men with androgenetic alopecia, demonstrating that both Type I and Type II 5αR are present and measurable in the human scalp follicle system, with meaningful differences between men and women (Sawaya & Price, 1997). Immunohistochemical work has further mapped where the two isoenzymes localize within scalp skin and follicle structures, finding Type 2 within hair follicle structures and Type 1 concentrated in sebaceous glands (Bayne et al., 1999).

That is established, mainstream pharmacology, and it stays in this article. But notice what it is: a description of where DHT gets made. It tells you the pressure the follicle is under. It doesn't tell you what happens inside the follicle when that pressure arrives — and it is not, on its own, a claim about any botanical.

Where the Follicle's Fate Is Actually Decided

At the base of every hair follicle sits a small cluster of specialized cells called the dermal papilla — the follicle's command center. It receives hormonal signals and translates them into instructions for the surrounding hair matrix: keep growing, grow thinner, or stop. Androgen-driven miniaturization is, at the cellular level, a story about what happens to those cells: exposed to androgen and to the inflammatory signaling that accompanies it, they can be pushed toward programmed cell death and toward a state that makes the local environment more inflammatory still.

So: DHT is the pressure. The dermal papilla is where the pressure lands. And the dermal papilla is where the published verbascoside evidence actually lives.

The Evidence That Anchors This Article

In 2022, a research team in Thailand published a controlled in vitro study in Scientific Reports — the open-access journal from the publishers of Nature — examining the effects of an Acanthus ebracteatus extract and of verbascoside on human dermal papilla cells and on murine macrophages (Wisuitiprot et al., 2022).

Their framing is the same one I've just walked you through: androgenic alopecia as a two-part process, DHT generated from testosterone plus micro-inflammation in and around the follicle. That is why this single study speaks to both halves of what I want to tell you.

In their laboratory experiments, verbascoside:

Promoted dermal papilla cell growth. Cell-cycle analysis showed verbascoside shifting the treated cells out of the resting G1 phase and into the G2/M phase — the signature of cells actively moving through division. (In the interest of precision: the S-phase fraction did not change meaningfully for verbascoside in that experiment. I'd rather give you the correct detail than the tidier one.)
Prevented testosterone-induced death of human dermal papilla cells. When the researchers exposed dermal papilla cells to testosterone, the cells underwent apoptosis — programmed cell death. Verbascoside, at 62.50 µg/mL in that cell model, prevented it, at statistical significance. This is the finding at the center of the study, and at the center of this article.
Reduced the release of pro-inflammatory signals. Verbascoside diminished IL-1α and IL-6 released by stressed dermal papilla cells, and IL-1β, TNF-α and nitric oxide released by macrophages — the immune cells that drive the inflammatory side of the picture.

Now the constraints, and I want them stated as loudly as the findings.

These were cell studies. In vitro means in cells, in a dish — not in people, not on a scalp. Cells in culture have no blood supply, no immune system, no hormonal axis, no hair cycle. Laboratory findings are the beginning of a scientific story, not the end of one. The authors say so themselves, in the closing line of their own abstract: “further clinical study is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness.” I am not going to claim more than the people who ran the experiment.

And the verbascoside in that study did not come from lilac. The researchers used verbascoside from Acanthus ebracteatus, a plant of traditional Thai medicine. Verbascoside is verbascoside — the same defined molecule whichever of the many plants it's drawn from — but the study was not run on MD's lilac-derived material, and I will not imply that it was. If you take one habit away from this article, let it be that one: always ask what, exactly, the study tested.

Why This Article Changed

An earlier version of this article said something different. It said verbascoside had been studied in the laboratory for its interaction with both Type I and Type II 5-alpha-reductase — the enzyme claim, right there in the headline.

We had a document supporting that. It came to us through the ingredient supply chain, and it cited a real, well-regarded pharmacology paper as its source. So we did what we should have done before publishing in the first place, just later than we should have: we pulled the primary source and read it.

The cited paper is a genuine piece of research. It does not mention verbascoside. It doesn't mention acteoside, or lilac, or Syringa. It tests two smaller molecules that happen to be structural fragments of the verbascoside molecule — and its actual result points toward selectivity for one isoenzyme, not activity against both. A second document we held turned out to be an unpublished preliminary report, on a raw plant extract, in rat tissue, examining two entirely different enzymes — which someone along the way had read as “two isoforms.”

The claim was not supported. So it's gone: from the body of this article, from the mechanism section, and from the title.

I'm telling you rather than quietly editing the page, because this is the single most useful thing I can teach you about evaluating hair-loss products: a citation is not evidence until someone opens it. A supplier document with a reference at the bottom is a marketing asset. The paper it points to is the evidence — and sometimes, as here, the two say different things. I'd rather lose a punchy headline than keep a claim I can't defend.

Why Drug-Free Options Matter So Much for Women

Here is the clinical reality that shaped my entire career as a formulator.

The best-known pharmaceutical acting on the DHT pathway is finasteride, a predominantly Type II 5αR inhibitor. Whatever its profile in men, for a large share of the women I spent my career caring for, it is simply off the table:

Finasteride is contraindicated in pregnancy. Because DHT is essential to the development of male fetal genitalia, 5αR inhibitors carry the risk of causing abnormalities in a male fetus — which is why women who are pregnant or may become pregnant are told not to take, or even handle broken tablets of, the drug (Hirshburg et al., 2016).
Women trying to conceive face the same wall. For a woman in her 30s or 40s balancing fertility plans with progressing hair thinning, a teratogenic systemic drug is not a realistic daily companion.
Nursing mothers are excluded. Postpartum shedding is one of the most common triggers that brings women to my articles — and it arrives precisely when systemic pharmaceutical options are most restricted.
Many women simply do not want a systemic hormonal-pathway drug, a position I respect and share in many clinical contexts.

I practiced Obstetrics & Gynecology. My patient population was this excluded population. When I looked at the hair-loss landscape through their eyes, I saw a mechanism — androgen-driven miniaturization at the dermal papilla — that science understood in real depth, and a patient population given almost no way to engage with it.

That is the “why” of botanical research in this space: the follicle biology is mainstream science, the excluded population is enormous, and defined plant molecules with published research on the relevant human cell type are a rational, drug-free direction for the women pharmaceuticals left behind. To be clear about what that means: MD HAIR products are not drugs, they do not inhibit 5-alpha-reductase, and they do not do what finasteride does. They are drug-free and hormone-free by design — formulated so the question “but can I use this?” has a much simpler answer.

The Consistency Problem — and How Lilac Cell Culture Solves It

There's an unglamorous problem in botanical formulation that deserves more attention than it gets: plants are inconsistent.

The verbascoside content of plant material harvested from a field varies with species, growing season, soil, sunlight, harvest timing, and extraction method. Two batches of “lilac extract” can differ meaningfully in actual active content. For a formulating physician, that variability is unacceptable — a label claim means nothing if the molecule behind it fluctuates batch to batch.

This is where plant cell culture technology changes the equation. Instead of extracting from field-grown material, lilac cells are cultured under controlled laboratory conditions — the same biotechnology approach the phytochemistry field has developed for producing high-value plant compounds, including phenylethanoid glycosides like verbascoside, in standardized, reproducible systems (Alipieva et al., 2014; Barbulova et al., 2014). The verbascoside used in the dermo-cosmetic stability work cited above was itself produced by plant cell biotechnology rather than field harvest (Vertuani et al., 2011).

The advantages, from a formulator's chair:

Consistent verbascoside content, batch after batch — so what's in the formula is what was designed to be in the formula.
Purity and traceability. Cell culture sidesteps field-borne contaminants — pesticides, heavy metals, environmental pollutants — that can ride along with conventionally harvested botanicals.
Sustainability. Producing the target molecule in culture doesn't require harvesting acres of plant material.

Let me be careful about what this is and isn't. Standardization is a reproducibility advantage, not a potency claim. It does not make verbascoside do more than the published research shows it does. What it means is that the molecule discussed in this article is the same molecule, at the same level, in the bottle you open next spring as in the one you open today. Given how much of this category runs on undisclosed, unmeasured “proprietary extracts,” I think that's worth a great deal — but I won't inflate it into something it isn't.

The Bottom Line

Let me compress this article into the paragraph I'd give you across a desk.

DHT-driven follicular miniaturization is the central mechanism of pattern hair thinning. It runs through 5-alpha-reductase — an enzyme system with two isoenzymes, Type I and Type II, both measurable in the human scalp (Sawaya & Price, 1997) — and it lands on the dermal papilla, the cells at the base of the follicle that decide whether a hair keeps growing. The pharmaceutical route to that pathway is closed to many women. Verbascoside, a phenylethanoid glycoside found in lilac, has been studied in controlled laboratory research on human dermal papilla cells, where it prevented testosterone-induced cell death and reduced the release of pro-inflammatory signals in cell studies — with the honest caveats that this was in vitro, that the study used verbascoside from a different plant source, and that the authors themselves call for clinical study. That is a real, published, cell-level finding on exactly the right cell type, made reproducible through lilac cell culture. It is not a cure, and it is not a drug. It is a rational, transparent, drug-free scientific direction for the women who need one, described as exactly what it is.

Dr. Lin's Clinical Perspective

“When I evaluate a botanical, I ask three questions. Is the target real — a cell type and a mechanism mainstream science takes seriously? For the dermal papilla and androgen-driven miniaturization, emphatically yes. Is the molecule defined — a named compound I can standardize and measure, not a vague 'extract'? Verbascoside passes, and lilac cell culture is what holds its consistency batch to batch. And third: can I trace every claim to a paper I have personally opened? That last question is the one that changed this article. We had described an enzyme interaction on the strength of a supply-chain document; when I read the primary source it cited, the claim wasn't there, so I removed it. What I say instead is what the published research supports: in laboratory studies on human dermal papilla cells, verbascoside prevented testosterone-induced cell death and reduced pro-inflammatory signals. A formulating physician's credibility is spent the first time she claims more than her evidence — and I have never found honesty and clarity of message to be in conflict.”

— Dr. Susan Lin, MD, Physician Formulator, MD HAIR

Mechanism Spotlight: Two Insults, One Cell

The Wisuitiprot study interests me because of how it frames the problem, not just what it found.

Androgenic alopecia is usually explained to consumers as a single-villain story: DHT, and only DHT. The dermatology literature increasingly describes at least two overlapping insults — androgen signaling and chronic low-grade micro-inflammation around the follicle. Both converge on the same place: the dermal papilla, the cluster of cells at the follicle's base that governs whether the hair matrix above it keeps building a thick terminal hair or begins building a thinner one.

The 2022 study modeled both insults in the same set of experiments. On the androgen side, dermal papilla cells exposed to testosterone went into apoptosis; verbascoside prevented that testosterone-induced cell death in the culture model. On the inflammatory side, verbascoside reduced IL-1α and IL-6 from stressed dermal papilla cells, and IL-1β, TNF-α and nitric oxide from macrophages. One molecule, tested against both arms of the process the paper describes, in the cell type where that process plays out.

That is a coherent scientific rationale. It is also — and I'll close this the way I'd close it in clinic — an in vitro rationale. Cells in a dish behaved a certain way. Whether that translates to a human scalp is an open question the study's own authors say requires clinical work to answer. I find the direction genuinely compelling. I am not going to tell you it is proven, because it isn't.

MD HAIR Product Recommendation

MD Nutri Hair™ — Internal Nutrition for the Hair's Natural Cycle

The dermal papilla sits at the base of the follicle, below the skin — which is why the supplement arm of the MD HAIR protocol exists. MD Nutri Hair™ combines lilac stem-cell extract standardized for verbascoside with flaxseed and lignan powders, biotin at a sensible cofactor dose, niacinamide, and vitamin E, to nourish the hair's natural cycle from within — one easy capsule a day, formulated drug-free and hormone-free, with the same standardized lilac-derived verbascoside discussed throughout this article.

Why this ingredient, stated precisely: verbascoside is the molecule that, in the published research reviewed above, prevented testosterone-induced death of human dermal papilla cells in laboratory studies, and reduced the release of pro-inflammatory signals including IL-1α, IL-6, IL-1β and TNF-α in laboratory studies. Those are cell studies, not clinical trials, and that is exactly how I want you to hold them.

In a 30-day in-office consumer use study of MD Nutri Hair (30 subjects, self-reported, no placebo), 95% reported improved hair appearance, 90% reported better manageability, and 75% reported increased fullness. Individual results vary; studies on file. Because there are no clinical data in pregnant or breastfeeding women, we do not advocate using MD HAIR products during pregnancy or lactation.

MD Nutri Hair™ is also available through our sister site, md-factor.com, where you'll find the full MD® line and our customer reviews.

Learn more: MD Nutri Hair™ · The Science of Lilac Verbascoside

Genuine MD HAIR and MD Nutri Hair™ products are sold only through mdhair.com, md-factor.com, and official La Cañada Ventures stores on Amazon and Walmart.

References

Dr. Susan Lin, MD is the physician formulator behind MD HAIR, a line of drug-free, hormone-free, clinically informed hair care products by La Cañada Ventures, Inc. This article is for educational purposes and does not constitute medical advice. Consult your physician for personalized guidance. Because there are no clinical data in pregnant or breastfeeding women, we do not advocate using MD HAIR products during pregnancy or lactation.

MD HAIR products are cosmetics and dietary supplements. MD Nutri Hair™ is a dietary supplement. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Individual results vary.

Explore more in our Verbascoside & Lilac Science series at mdhair.com/pages/verbascoside-hair-science