Plucked Human Hair Shafts and Biomolecular Medical Research

Abstract

The hair follicle is a skin integument at the boundary between an organism and its immediate environment. The biological role of the human hair follicle has lost some of its ancestral importance. However, an indepth investigation of this miniorgan reveals hidden complexity with huge research potential. An essential consideration when dealing with human research is the awareness of potential harm and thus the absolute need not to harm—a rule aptly qualified by the Latin term “primum non nocere” (first do no harm). The plucked hair shaft offers such advantages. The use of stem cells found in hair follicles cells is gaining momentum in the field of regenerative medicine. Furthermore, current diagnostic and clinical applications of plucked hair follicles include their use as autologous and/or three-dimensional epidermal equivalents, together with their utilization as surrogate tissue in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics studies. Consequently, the use of noninvasive diagnostic procedures on hair follicle shafts, posing as a surrogate molecular model for internal organs in the individual patient for a spectrum of human disease conditions, can possibly become a reality in the near future.

Generation of full‐thickness skin equivalents using hair follicle‐derived primary human keratinocytes and fibroblasts

“…Recently, the human hair follicle and its stem cell reservoir have received growing attention due to their potential for applications in the field of regenerative medicine (Mistriotis & Andreadis, ; Schembri, Scerri, & Ayers, ). The hair follicle contains a variety of cellular components: epithelial cells from the hair matrix and the bulge region, the outer root sheath (ORS) in particular, mesenchymal cells from the dermal papilla and dermal sheath, plus several pools of epithelial, mesenchymal, and melanocyte stem cells (McElwee & Sinclair, ; Paus & Cotsarelis, ; Rompolas & Greco, ).…”

Mapping of cis-acting expression quantitative trait loci in human scalp hair follicles

“…However, a skin biopsy is required in order to obtain intact HFs, whereas hair plucking is a less invasive technique. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that plucked hairs retain most epithelial structures, maintain the integrity of the outer root sheet and also contain stem cells [ 46 ]. Finally, due to the small size of our samples, particularly that of the replication sample, we considered advisable to exclude from the present study indels and sex chromosomes, and limit ourselves to reporting, in very general terms, differential findings between HFs from frontal and occipital scalp areas.…”

Processing hair follicles for transmission electron microscopy

“…Plucking is used in medical research and for obtaining a surrogate tissue in drug development. 12 The analysis of plucks is also important in forensic science. 13 The advantages of plucking are that collection is fast, can be done at clinical scale, is less invasive than biopsies and yields tissue from a single hair follicle without any surrounding tissues.…”

“…A punch biopsy is a rapid and reproducible method to obtain uniform shaped skin samples containing intact follicles. 12,20,21 In this technique, skin is extracted using a disposable or sterilizable punch. Care must be taken to ensure the biopsy contains both the subcutaneous fat and the entire follicle unit within.…”