In vitro hair follicle growth model for drug testing

Introduction PrimeSurface Research Papers

In vitro hair follicle growth model for drug testing

Tatsuto Kageyama, Hikaru Miyata, Jieun Seo, Ayaka Nanmo and Junji Fukuda

Sci Rep 13, 4847 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31842-y

Copyright © Authors 2023
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).

Background

Hair loss is a complex issue with various causes. The leading treatment is pharmacotherapy, but it also has limitations. When evaluating the drug efficacy, rather than temporal cellular responses, a cell culture approach that mimics the in vivo microenvironment is required. It is known that epithelial and mesenchymal interactions are crucial for hair follicle growth, and the authors’ group developed a culture system to regenerate hair follicles with high efficiency using mouse and human cells. This paper shows possibility of this approach to be a promising drug testing platform for treating hair loss disorders.

Research Achievements

Hair follicloids were formed using PrimeSurface™ plate and hair peg-like sprouting was successfully generated in culture using various combinations of cells and matrices . This approach showed potential for testing hair growth-promoting drugs, as evidenced by the elongation of sprouts when exposed to minoxidil. However, mature hair follicles were not formed in this study. Further improvements are needed to generate mature hair follicles, which could have implications for the treatment of alopecia and hair regenerative medicine.

【Fig.1】

Schematic representation of the preparation of human hair follicle growth models (termed hair follicloids). Hair follicloids are formed through the self-organization of human epithelial and mesenchymal cells, which generate sprouting structures in vitro. Changes in sprouting length were investigated after exposure to hair growth-promoting drug candidates.

Use of PrimeSurface™ in this study

Cells	:	Fetal/adult epithelial + mesenchymal cells (5 x 10³ cells for each) AGA patient-derived hair follicle stem cells + dermal papilla cells (5 x 10³ cells for each)
Medium	:	DMEM/F-12 containing 2% v/v Matrigel or collagen
Preparation	:	Centrifuge the PrimeSurfaceTM 96U plate at 100 x g for 2 min, cooled at 4 °C for at least 30 min and incubated in a 5% CO₂ incubator
Drug treatment	:	Add 10 μM minoxidil into DMEM/F-12 from D4 to D10 after seeding.
Assay	:	In vitro hair-like sprouting assay (microscope imaging, histological and immunohistochemical staining)
Results	:	Hair peg-like sprouting was longer in the minoxidil-treated at 8 and 10 days of culture