Enzymatic Digestion of Scalp Hair Follicle Bulge Yields More Stem Keratinocytes Than Explant Isolation
TLDR Using enzymes to break down scalp hair follicles gets more stem cells for skin and hair growth than the old method.
The study investigates the efficiency of enzymatic digestion versus explant isolation for extracting stem keratinocytes from the hair follicle bulge. The researchers hypothesized that trypsin digestion would yield more stem keratinocytes than the traditional explant method. Biopsies from adult scalps were processed using thermolysin to separate the dermis from the epidermis, followed by microdissection and either explant culture or trypsin digestion. Results showed that trypsin digestion produced a higher quantity of bulge-derived keratinocytes with a shorter doubling time and more colonies compared to the explant method. The conclusion is that trypsin digestion is a faster and more efficient method for isolating bulge-derived stem keratinocytes, which will be used to create reconstructed skin substitutes to evaluate their potential for follicular differentiation.
