New hope for baldness, first successful hair growth outside the body

 TOKYO: For chronic baldness patients, there is a hopeful news from Japan that for the first time in human history, hair has been grown outside the human body in a laboratory, transplanted where it has been observed to grow.

Biomedical engineer Tatsuto Keigiyama of Japan's Yokohama University and his colleagues have created a three-dimensional organoid from mouse stem cells. With the help of technology, it is now easy to make them and thus they are being used in medical research.

Experts have not only grown hair from them but also colored it. They were then carefully transferred into bald mice, which grew hair and completed several rounds of breeding.

Whether in humans or other mammals, hair follicles develop when the organism is going through embryonic stages. In this way, the upper skin (epidermis) and the underlying connective tissue or tissue interact to form the entire organ. This process is called epidermal and mesenchymal interaction. This is the reason why experts have considered these two aspects.

The scientists extracted stem cells from the embryos of mice and extracted from them skin epithelial cells and mesenchymal cells. They were then cultured in Matrigel, a natural membrane derived from mice. Matrigel aggregates cells and provides them with a structure. However, some cellular structures have also been cultivated using Matrigel.

Cells of this type form clumps and later separate from each other and become organized in a pattern and structure. But the addition of Matrigel led to success while the rest of the cells failed.

Then, when both types of epithelial and mesenchymal cells were combined, the first fine hair appeared and grew to two millimeters in length at 23 days. Thus, for the first time, hair has been grown in the laboratory at the cellular level.

Then a drug was added which made the hair regain its color and look more natural. Hair was then implanted into completely bald mice and the goal was to determine their survival.

At this point, the mice were given immunosuppressant drugs, the transplanted hairs started to grow, they were cut and the hairs went through several growth cycles for ten months.

Although it has been successfully tested on mice, it may take some time to use it on humans. For humans, stem cells will be reverse-engineered by taking cells donated from adults instead of embryos, and the process is expected to be effective.