Hair Restoration Blog

Intercytex has recently released some information on its hair multiplication experiments in a new article in the Journal of experimental dermatology. The title is “A graft model for hair development” and the article discusses what is done so far for hair multiplication experimentally. Intercytex has been involved with hair stem cell, hair culturing and hair multiplication, which is also known as hair cloning.

In this article follicular cell implantation (FCI) is discussed as an experimental cell therapy for the treatment of hair loss that uses cultured hair follicle cells to induce new hair formation. The process of culturing hair cells is based on the demonstration that adult dermal papilla cells (DPC) retain the hair inductive potential that they acquired during hair morphogenesis before birth. To obtain FCI, the investigators isolated hair inductive cells from scalp biopsies and then propagated them in culture media in order to provide adequate cells to generate several new follicles from a few hair follicles.

Following expansion of cells in culture, they implanted those cells into the scalp where they induce the formation of new follicles below the level of skin. They describe a consistent, reliable method in which they can test hair induction. Since the process relies on the ability to retain the potential for hair induction during the expansion of DPC in culture.

They go over a simple graft model that supports hair morphogenesis. In this experiment, they combine dermal cells with embryonic mouse epidermis that provides the keratinocyte (one of the skin cells) component of induced follicles. The grafts are placed under a protective skin flap in the host athymic mouse (a special mouse without capability to reject the transplanted grafts from human) where the cells will form a skin graft with hair if the dermal cells are hair inductive DPC.

Using the assay freshly isolated and cultured mouse embryo dermal cells as well as cultured dermal papilla cells from other species all induced hair formation. They also showed that induced hairs were aesthetically indistinguishable from those of the epidermal donor in length, thickness, and pigmentation. The investigators stated that the newly formed hairs were histologically normal and could resemble a complete natural hair.

We at Los Angeles hair transplant surgery centers of US Hair Restoration will closely follow up with the progress of hair multiplication and cloning techniques. Although the result of the cultured hair on animals has been released before, the current released article is interesting and elucidates more on the characteristics of cultured hair during the process of hair multiplication so called hair cloning. It seems like we still have a long way to go till we can practically use hair multiplication techniques in restoring human hair.