Hairy hope for baldies

     London: No need to lose any more sleep over losing your hair, for even if you do lose your luscious locks, you may some time soon be able to regrow all, if not more, of your crowning glory. And this hope is held out buy Swiss researchers, who have discovered that with the progeny of a single hair stem cell, it would be theoretically possible to generate the complete hair bulb of a human being. The research team led by Yann Barrandon at the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) and the CHUV (Lausanne University Hospital) has discovered that certain cells inside the hair follicle are true multipotent stem cells, capable of developing into the many different cell types needed for hair growth and follicle replacement, and posted their findings in an article appearing in the Oct 3 advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2001, Barrandon was part of a French research team who reported in the scientific journal Cell, that stem cells could be used to generate skin containing hair and sebaceous glands in mice. But it was unclear at that time,whether the stem cells in hair follicles were true stem cells, capable of long-term renewal, or multipotent progenitor cells that would not permanently engraft in the follicle. The Swiss researchers have answered that question, using rat whisker hair follicles to demonstrate that the clonogenic keratinocytes in hair follicles are indeed true stem cells. After isolating stem cells from rat whisker follicles, labelling them, and growing them in culture for 140 generations, the researchers found that the transplanted cells participated in the hair cycle over long periods of time, showing that they are true multipotent stem cells and not progeniture cells. "With the progeny of a single stem cell, it would be theoretically possible to generate the complete hair bulb of a human being, and one that would last for years," Barrandon explained. The ability of the stem cells in hair follicles to repeatedly regenerate all the different cell types of the follicle and sebaceous glands has important implications for regenerative medicine, say the researchers, and that the method could one day be used to regenerate hair on patients with severe burns.
Oct 6, 2005

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