Hair Today

This strange structure is a developing mouse hair follicle, shown in close-up on the right, embedded in a patch of skin. But it’s not growing on the back of an animal – it’s been created in the lab inside a little ball of stem cells known as an organoid. Scientists can successfully grow organoids from all kinds of tissues, from brain to bowel, but generating the complex multi-layered components of skin and hair has proved tricky. Now researchers have found a way to make skin organoids sprout hairs for the first time. These hairy little balls will be a useful laboratory model for studying hair growth and loss, and could be used for testing drugs that are used on the skin. The next step is to see if the same technique can be used with human stem cells, which could lead to the development of more realistic lab-grown skin for grafts.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Jiyoon Lee and colleagues
• Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in Cell Reports, January 2018