A new study involving three volunteers found that skin scars began to behave like intact skin after being treated with hair follicle transplants. and restored healthy patterns, even expressing genes found in unblemished, healthy skin.
This finding could lead to better treatments for scarring both on the skin and in the body, offering hope for patients with extensive scarring that can impair organ function and cause disability.
Claire Higgins, lead author of Imperial’s Bioengineering division, said: Our findings lay the groundwork for exciting new treatments that can rejuvenate mature scars and restore healthy skin function. ”
The study was published today in Nature Regenerative Medicine.
hope in hair
Scar tissue in the skin lacks the hair, sweat glands, blood vessels, and nerves that are essential for regulating body temperature and detecting pain and other sensations. Scarring not only impairs movement, but can also cause discomfort and emotional distress.
Compared to scar tissue, healthy skin undergoes constant remodeling by hair follicles. Hairy skin heals faster and scars less than hairless skin. Also, hair transplantation had previously been shown to aid wound healing. I hypothesized that there is.
To test their hypothesis, the Imperial researchers collaborated with Dr. Francisco Jiménez, Chief Hair Transplant Surgeon at the Meditechnia Clinic and Associate Research Professor at the University of Fernando Pessoa Canarias, Gran Canaria, Spain. They transplanted hair follicles into mature scars on the scalp of three of his participants in 2017. The researchers chose the most common type of scar called a normotrophic scar, which usually forms after surgery.
They microscopically photographed 3-mm-thick scar biopsies immediately before and 2, 4, and 6 months after transplantation.
Researchers found that hair follicles drive structural and genetic changes in scars toward a healthy, undamaged skin profile.
Dr. Jimenez said: The global incidence of scarring is much higher and includes extensive scarring that forms after burns and trauma. Our work opens new avenues for treating scars and approaches to prevent scarring. You can even change the
skin architect
After transplantation, the follicles continued to generate hair and induced recovery across skin layers.
Scarring causes the outermost layer of the skin, the epidermis, to become thinner and more prone to tearing. Six months after transplantation, the epidermis doubles in thickness and has increased cell proliferation, almost the same as intact skin. Now thick.
The next skin layer, the dermis, contains connective tissue, blood vessels, sweat glands, nerves, and hair follicles. Due to scar maturation, the dermis has fewer cells and blood vessels, but after transplantation, the number of cells doubled in 6 months, and the number of blood vessels reached almost the level of healthy skin in 4 months. . This indicates that the hair follicle influenced the growth of new cells and blood vessels within the scar.
Scars also increase the density of collagen fibers, the main structural protein in the skin, and align scar tissue so that it is stiffer than healthy tissue. It is now able to form a “basket weave” pattern, reducing stiffness, which is a major factor in tears and discomfort.
The authors also found that after transplantation, scars expressed 719 genes differently than before. was less expressed.
multi-pronged approach
The researchers do not know exactly how the transplant promoted such changes. They now uncover the underlying mechanisms so that treatments can be developed that remodel scar tissue toward healthy skin without the need for hair follicle transplantation or hair fiber growth. Next, we will investigate hairless skin or organs such as the heart, which can be scarred after a heart attack, or the liver, which can be scarred by fatty liver disease or cirrhosis. You can test the results.
Dr Higgins said:
“While current treatments for growth factor-like scarring focus on a single factor of scarring, the hair follicle likely provides multiple growth factors at once to rebuild scar tissue. Therefore, our new approach addresses multiple aspects. This further supports the use of treatments like hair transplantation that alter scar structure and gene expression to restore function.”
This work was funded by the Medical Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (part of UKRI).
