Some very hairy mice are bringing us another step closer to un-LOCKing a way to regenerate
a full head of hair.
Did somebody say a pun?!
About 50% of men and 25% of women experience at least partial hair loss by the age of 50,
whether due to age, medical treatments, or disease.
Current options for those looking to reverse this loss include things like medications
that may slow hair loss and transplants from hair follicles elsewhere on the body.
But neither have the often desired effect of restoring a thick and full volume of hair.
Researchers have been optimizing techniques for culturing “hair follicle germs” in
a dish for years.
There are 2 key types of cells that help hair follicles develop before we’re born -- epithelial
cells that help us create skin, and mesenchymal cells that help us create a variety of connective
tissues -- so researchers copied this strategy from the embryo into the lab and they got
hair follicles to grow!
Though, these techniques were never high yield enough to produce the amount of follicles
needed to restore a full head of hair -- to its previous luxurious glory -- until now…
Recently, Japanese researchers made improvements to this protocol, and then designed a special,
oxygen-permeable mini-chip to scale up the farming of follicles, growing up to ~5000
at once.
The “chip” isn’t like a computer chip -- it’s a tiny polymer structure with little
wells in it.
They grow the follicles, add a collagen and mesh layer for easy handling, and transplant
right to the head where hopefully, it takes hold and grows like normal hair.
They showed that transplanting these follicles onto immunodeficient mice led to lots of new
hairs being formed within just 18 days!
They could easily transfer cells from their chip to a collagen matrix for uniform transplant
with follicles nice and evenly spaced out, which would make for practical harvesting
when it comes time to transplant cells grown with these chips onto humans.
While these engineers made big progress in the scale-up and efficiency of growing hair
follicles on a chip, their tests WERE all done with immune-deficient mice.
But it’s not always a great idea to suppress a human’s immune system.
It leaves them vulnerable to infections.
So, each patient would need their own personal source of hair follicles…
Fortunately, hair follicles contain stem cells capable of regenerating new hairs, among other
cells.
Meaning that perhaps in the future instead of transplanting follicles from another part
of the body, scientists can take a few follicles from a patient, expand them in culture, then
transplant way more back onto your bald spot!
So, for those waiting eagerly for solutions, they’re coming!
Keep putting sunscreen on the back of your head.
We have the machinery, scientists just need a little more time to figure out the cells
that’ll grow in them.
Before you go, everyone.
This is SAM!
Sam is going to be on the channel more often from now on, she’s amazing she studies neurobiology and I predict
-- like hair -- she’s going to grow on you!
That is an excellent/horrible pun.
Hi everyone!
I’m super excited, I will need to up my pun game for sure.
Your puns are great.
You can also find sam on instagram
Yep!
I’m @Science.Sam and I talk about my work in Neuroscience and other science
communication topics all the time.
Thanks for watching! Did you know that we shared our DNA with neanderthals?
And they shared it with us too, if you know what we mean. Watch this video to learn more?
Did you know theres a special word for something that produces hair?
It's called trichogenic, and insects and other arthropods have these cells too.
Thanks again for watching Seeker!