Recent Advances in Hair Cloning

Article by HairlossTalk.com

Alkaline Phosphatase

Mouse feet do not, in general, have hair follicles in them, just like
human palms and soles. However, mouse ears, like humans ears, are covered in
tiny hair follicles that produce tiny hair fibers (vellus hair fibers in humans).
After about 3 months, the scientists observed visible new hair growth from the
injected skin, both with dermal papilla and cells form the lower dermal sheath,
next to the dermal papilla, but not the upper dermal sheath. This showed that
both cell types, although they came from different structural components of
the hair follicle, were functionally similar - both cell populations could induce
new hair follicle formation. The scientists also demonstrated that the cells
with the ability to induce hair growth were alkaline phosphatase positive. Alkaline
phosphatase itself probably has nothing to do with the ability to induce hair
growth, but its expression is potentially a useful method of quality control.

Conclusion? Those cells with alkaline phosphatase positive expression are the
ones you want to take, culture, and transplant. Cells that are alkaline phosphatase
negative do not seem to promote new hair growth and should be discarded. This
may help improve the success rate with hair cloning.

Injected cells merging with existing cells



At 3 and 6 months post cell injection, the scientists shone UV light on the mouse
ear and foot tissue. They could see that the implanted fluorescent cells were
found within hair follicles and the cells were in the dermal sheath and dermal
papilla structures. This suggested the both cell populations were capable of inducing
brand new hair follicles to develop. That is not so surprising given the previous
work in this field by Jahoda and others. However, what was more intriguing for
understanding hair cloning, was that in mouse ears there were “chimeric”
hair follicles with dermal papilla and dermal sheath structures containing both
fluorescent and non-fluorescent cells combined. The scientists suggested that
this was an indicator that the injected fluorescent cells had migrated in and
integrated themselves into the tiny natural hair follicles already present in
the ears. The new cells had apparently altered the size and growth cycle of the
tiny hair follicles to make them much bigger and to make them grow for longer
which in turn produced bigger hair fibers.



Fig 2 above: Cultured dermal papilla cells injected into
a mouse ear induce new hair follicles and modify natural hair follicles already
present to yield tufts of long hair growth 4 months after injection.


Using injected cells to reverse Miniaturization?

This observation makes several important points in terms of using hair
cloning to treat androgenetic alopecia. If cells can be implanted that will integrate
with resident hair follicles, then men and women in the early stages of androgenetic
alopecia could be treated. Hair follicles in the process of miniaturization could
be boosted with implanted cells to force them back into a full sized, terminal
growth state. By exploiting the resident hair follicle structures as a guide for
the implanted cells, the problems of erratic follicle orientation and distribution
over the skin, seen in hair cloning studies so far, could be resolved. The damaged,
small, natural hair follicles would provide the distribution pattern and angle
of orientation, while the injected dermal papilla cells would contribute the characteristics
of large, terminal hair follicles. So those in the early stages of baldness with
just a little thinning, could significantly benefit from hair cloning. In theory,
young men and women in families where the androgenetic alopecia trait is strong
and who are likely to develop androgenetic alopecia could be injected with cells
in advance of overt hair loss and need never develop any alopecia.

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