Nascent blood vessels in the skin arise from nestin-expressing hair-follicle cells.
Besides forming hair shafts, the highly organized, metabolically vigorous hair follicle plays several crucial roles in skin architecture. The follicle contains a distinct population of presumptive follicular stem cells that express nestin, also a marker for neural stem cells. These nestin-expressing follicle cells are located principally in the follicular bulge region. Nestin-driven GFP (ND-GFP), transfected into mice, principally labels cells in the bulge region, which is consistent with the cells' being the stem cells of the hair follicle. We report here that ND-GFP also labels developing skin blood vessels that appear to originate from hair follicles and form a follicle-linking network. This is seen most clearly by transplanting ND-GFP-labeled vibrissa (whisker) hair follicles to unlabeled nude mice. New vessels grow from the transplanted follicle, and these vessels increase when the local recipient skin is wounded. The ND-GFP-expressing structures are blood vessels, because they display the characteristic endothelial-cell-specific markers CD31 and von Willebrand factor. This model displays very early events in skin angiogenesis and can serve for rapid antiangiogenesis drug screening.
Amoh
Yasuyuki
Y
AntiCancer, Inc., 7917 Ostrow Street, San Diego, CA 92111, USA.
Li
Lingna
L
Yang
Meng
M
Moossa
A R
AR
Katsuoka
Kensei
K
Penman
Sheldon
S
Hoffman
Robert M
RM
D000818:Animals; D018859:Hair Follicle / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000166:cytology / Q000637:transplantation; D007381:Intermediate Filament Proteins / Q000032:analysis / Q000502:physiology*; D007668:Kidney / Q000098:blood supply; D051379:Mice; D008819:Mice, Nude; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D018919:Neovascularization, Physiologic; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins / Q000032:analysis / Q000502:physiology*; D064231:Nestin; D012867:Skin / Q000098:blood supply*; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology; D014945:Wound Healing
D007381:Intermediate Filament Proteins; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins; C577485:Nes protein, mouse; D064231:Nestin