Men who have fallen victim to baldness may hope to regrow new hair with the help of a new anti-hair loss injection, likely to be available in 5 years’ time.

Male pattern baldness treatment has been made easier and less expensive than before thanks to Propecia finasteride, a prescription-based medication. Now another unique hair loss treatment is under development to rival this successful daily oral tablet, and is likely to be available on the market within 5 years, according to experts from Yale University.

The proposed baldness treatment, which will use fat cell reserves from the waistline, may also help in streamlining patients’ silhouette, suggests the new research. It says that unused fat cells can send across chemical signals to the dormant hair follicles and reactivate them to produce new hair growth.

The details of the new research have been published in Cell, a peer-reviewed medical journal. A series of lab studies using potentially hair-triggering fat cells have so far been conducted on mice and the scientists hope the results will not vary in humans.

The new study suggests that injecting fat cells to the scalp might provide a long-term solution to male pattern hair loss. Even a medication like Propecia, which has so far enjoyed a high rate of success, is not recommended for use for more than a year unless any visible result is seen by that time. The new baldness remedy, however, might be used in different forms for years, says Valerie Horsley, one of the study authors.