title: Extensive Hair-Shaft Elongation by Isolated Mouse Whisker Follicles in Very Long-Term Gelfoam® Histoculture.
abstract: We have previously studied mouse whisker follicles in Gelfoam® histoculture to determine the role of nestin-expressing plutipotent stem cells, located within the follicle, in the growth of the follicular sensory nerve. Long-term Gelfoam® whisker histoculture enabled hair follicle nestin-expressing stem cells to promote the extensive elongation of the whisker sensory nerve, which contained axon fibers. Transgenic mice in which the nestin promoter drives green fluorescent protein (ND-GFP) were used as the source of the whiskers allowing imaging of the nestin-expressing stem cells as they formed the follicular sensory nerve. In the present report, we show that Gelfoam®-histocultured whisker follicles produced growing pigmented and unpigmented hair shafts. Hair-shaft length increased rapidly by day-4 and continued growing until at least day-12 after which the hair-shaft length was constant. By day-63 in histoculture, the number of ND-GFP hair follicle stem cells increased significantly and the follicles were intact. The present study shows that Gelfoam® histoculture can support extensive hair-shaft growth as well as hair follicle sensory-nerve growth from isolated hair follicles which were maintained over very long periods of time. Gelfoam® histoculture of hair follicles can provide a very long-term period for evaluating novel agents to promote hair growth.
authors.affiliation: AntiCancer Inc., San Diego, CA, United States of America; Department of Surgery, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States of America; Department of Anatomy, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Wenluo
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: AntiCancer Inc., San Diego, CA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Lingna
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Dermatology, Kitasato University, Sagimahara, Japan.
authors.forename: Sumiyuki
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mii
authors.affiliation: Department of Dermatology, Kitasato University, Sagimahara, Japan.
authors.forename: Yasuyuki
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Amoh
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: AntiCancer Inc., San Diego, CA, United States of America; Department of Surgery, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Hoffman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018859:Hair Follicle / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D046509:Tissue Culture Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D014738:Vibrissae / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism