Scientists Grow Fully Functioning Hair Follicles in New Lab First

Functional mouse hair follicles can be added to body parts that have been grown in the lab.

For the first time, researchers were able to make hair follicle organoids from cells obtained from mice.

They were able to affect the hair's color and function across multiple hair growth cycles.

The research could aid efforts to treat hair loss as well as provide alternative models for animal testing and drug screening.

During the embryo's development, hair follicles are formed. The mesenchyme and the mesenchyme next to it interact to initiate the process of morphing into an organ.

These epidermal-mesenchymal interactions are hard to understand. In a lab setting, scientists have been able to grow skin organoids, both mouse and human, that contain follicles, but they have not been successful in isolating them.

A group of scientists from Yokohama National University in Japan decided to take a crack at organoid science because it has been getting more sophisticated.

They got their start with two types of cells.

Matrigel, a mouse-derived preparation that helps cells form structures, was used to cultured some of the cells.

It was striking. The two types of cells aggregated and formed an organized structure.

These structures were dumbbell-shaped and failed to develop into functional follicles without the Matrigel.

The structures consisted of a core of epithelial cells surrounded by a shell of mesenchymal cells when the Matrigel was added.

The researchers say that this arrangement increases the contact area between the two cell types so that the blob can be developed into a follicle.

This is exactly what they saw. After 23 days, the core-shell blobs grew 2mm of hair.

The researchers were able to study the development and production of hair on the molecule.

There is a drug that stimulates the production of melanocytes.

The hairs that grew from the follicle organoids were more than the hairs that were not added to the culture.

They wanted to see if the organoids could integrate into a living body in nude mice.

The hair grown from the organoids will last at least 10 months.

This is a mouse study and can't be generalized to humans, but human research is next on the agenda.

Unlike with the mouse study, the team won't be using cells from embryos, but will take cells donated by adults and reverse engineer them into stem cells, from which they hope to grow the cells required.

The end goal of this process is ambitious. The team is hoping that their research will lead to treatments for conditions that affect all genders.

We may be able to reduce our reliance on animal testing by using an in vitro model.

The research has been published.