UK scientists use transplanted hair follicles to fix scar tissue offering hope for future scar treatments.
Using transplanted hair follicles, scientists from Imperial College London have demonstrated the possibility of triggering scar tissue to behave like uninjured skin, raising hope for future scar treatments.pointed out that scar tissue "lacks hair, sweat glands, blood vessels, and nerves, which are vital for regulating body temperature and detecting pain and other sensations".
Dr Claire Higgins, Imperial College London Department of Bioengineering, and lead author, explained: "After scarring, the skin never truly regains its pre-wound functions, and until now all efforts to remodel scars have yielded poor results." The researchers transplanted hair follicles into the mature scars on the scalp of three participants in 2017. They selected the most common type of scar that usually forms after surgery, but excluded keloid and hypertrophic scars which they said were of "more complex pathology".
Hair follicle transplantation "induced an increase in the epidermal thickness, interdigitation of the epidermal dermal junction, dermal cell density, and blood vessel density", they said. Specifically, at 6 months post-transplant, the epidermis had doubled in thickness alongside increased cell growth, bringing it to around the same thickness as uninjured skin.
In addition, after transplantation the scars "expressed 719 genes differently to before", with genes that promote cell and blood vessel growth being expressed more, whilst genes that promote scar-forming processes were expressed less.The results showed that anagen hair follicles can attenuate the fibrotic phenotype, providing new insights for developing regenerative approaches to remodel mature scars, the authors said.
The researchers admitted that they were unsure precisely how the transplants facilitated such a change, and they are now working to uncover the underlying mechanisms so they can develop therapies that remodel scar tissue towards healthy skin, without requiring transplantation of a hair follicle and growth of a hair fibre.
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