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.
AntiCancer, Inc., 7917 Ostrow Street, San Diego, CA 92111, USA.
Yasuyuki
Y
Amoh
Lingna
L
Li
Meng
M
Yang
A R
AR
Moossa
Kensei
K
Katsuoka
Sheldon
S
Penman
Robert M
RM
Hoffman
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