Hair loss can affect populations both physically and mentally. Physically, hair is important because it protects humans from the sun’s damaging rays and is also important for retaining heat. Mentally, studies have shown that men who suffer from hair loss, especially younger men, have a lower self-perception.

As a result, there are a variety of treatments for hair loss that many medical studies focus on, including the ingestion of drugs, hair transplants, and scalp reduction. A more recent technology, using induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, has become an area of intense focus. It has been shown to be a promising technology and solves the ethical issue of using adult stem cells as opposed to embryonic stem cells.

In addition, bioinformatics has become a large source of interest because of its ability to handle large sets of data spanning results from multiple experiments. However, a bioinformatics platform which analyzes the results from induced pluripotent stem cells in hair growth experiments does not exist.