Tissue-Engineered Skin Preserving the Potential of Epithelial Cells to Differentiate into Hair After Grafting

The study evaluated the ability of tissue-engineered skin to support hair follicle growth both in vitro and after grafting. It was found that while no hair growth occurred in vitro, hair did grow after grafting in skin composed of newborn mouse hair buds (HBs) and mouse fibroblast-derived dermis (mD). This hair-forming capacity was not observed in tissues with human fibroblast-derived dermis (hD). The study concluded that epithelial stem cells maintained their potential to induce hair growth after grafting when cultured in a permissive tissue-engineered dermal environment, particularly with mD, although the number of normal hair follicles decreased with longer culture times.