Hair loss may not be life threatening, but it is of substantial importance and trouble to a great many people worldwide. Hair regenerative medicine is being developed as a new therapy to combat the issue. Hair regenerative therapy involves regenerating hair follicles which are the small organs that grow and sustain hair. One of the challenges faced to hair regenerative medicines is the obstacle of the preparation of hair follicle germs for the reproductive source of large scale hair follicles.
Up to 5000 hair follicle germs simultaneously has successfully been prepared by the researchers, and reports of new hair growth from the hair follicle germs after transplantation into mice has been conducted by the researchers. Key to overcoming the obstacle was said to be choice of substrate materials for culture vessels. This study found oxygen permeable dimethylpolysiloxane effectively. Further evaluation of the feasibility of this method was conducted by the researchers by transferring the prepared hair follicle germs from a fabricated 300-microwell array HFG chip to generate hair follicles on a mouse. It was confirmed that hair generated at both the back on scalp transplant sites, with the regenerated hair exhibiting typical cycle of murine hair.
According to researchers this method is both simple and robust and shows great promise. Researchers hope that this technique will help to improve human regenerative therapies to treat hair loss in cases such as androgenic alopecia, stating that preliminary data suggests human hair follicle germ formation using human keratinocytes and dermal papilla cells is possible.
