Researchers at Indiana University have succeeded, through the use of human stem cells, in the laboratory in recreating skin including sebaceous glands and hair follicles. A world first.
- Researchers have succeeded in developing skin with hair follicles using human stem cells. A valuable innovation in the field of reconstructive surgery.
Years of stem cell research have enabled scientists at Indiana Medical School and Harvard Medical School to achieve a feat: create in the lab human skin with sebaceous glands and hair follicles. A great first which is an important step towards the creation of grafts that look more like the skin that our body produces naturally.
70 days of cultivation
Published on June 3 in the magazine Naturethe study shows that skin generated from pluripotent stem cells can be successfully grafted onto a nude mouse to grow human skin and hair follicles.
“This is the first study to show that human hair can be grown entirely from stem cells in a vessel, which has been a goal of the skin biology community for decades.”said Karl Koehler, assistant professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.
The scientific team at the origin of this advance is not at its first attempt. In 2013, she managed to create inner ear tissue from mouse embryonic stem cells using a so-called three-dimensional cell culture method, then in 2017, to cultivate inner ear tissue from stem cells. human. In 2018, these same researchers had also grown hairy skin in a dish using mouse stem cells.
By reusing this three-dimensional culture technique, the team this time incubated human stem cells for about 150 days in a ball-shaped cluster of cells, called the skin organoid, which constitutes all the layers of the skin. skin—the dermis being contained this time outside the organoid.
“We have developed a new ‘cooking recipe’ to generate human skin that produces hair follicles after about 70 days in cultureexplains Professor Koehler. As the hair follicles grow, the roots extend radially outward. It’s a weird-looking structure, almost like a deep-sea creature with tentacles sticking out of it.”
Many possible uses
Once this incubation period had passed, the researchers sought to find out if the organoids could be grafted onto the skin of mice: more than half then grew human hair follicles on the mice. This suggests a potential application of this process for the reconstruction of the skin and the face. “This could be a huge innovation, providing a potentially limitless source of soft tissue and hair follicles for reconstructive surgeries.”explains Jiyoon Lee, the first author of the study.
Outraged reconstruction following burns or injuriesother potential uses of organoids for hairy skin are wide ranging, from developing drugs or gene therapies for congenital skin diseases to recreating the early stages of skin cancer formation.
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