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. 2015 Sep 30;10(9):e0138005.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0138005. eCollection 2015.

Extensive Hair-Shaft Elongation by Isolated Mouse Whisker Follicles in Very Long-Term Gelfoam® Histoculture

Wenluo Cao  1 , Lingna Li  2 , Sumiyuki Mii  3 , Yasuyuki Amoh  3 , Fang Liu  4 , Robert M Hoffman  5
Affiliations

Extensive Hair-Shaft Elongation by Isolated Mouse Whisker Follicles in Very Long-Term Gelfoam® Histoculture

Wenluo Cao et al. PLoS One. .

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: Lingna Li is an employee of AntiCancer, Inc., and Wenluo Cao and Robert M. Hoffman are unpaid affiliates of AntiCancer, Inc. Sumiyuki Mii, Yasuyuki Amoh and Fang Liu were unpaid former affiliates of AntiCancer, Inc. Robert M. Hoffman is a PLOS ONE Editorial Board Member. AntiCancer Inc., markets animal models of cancer. There are no other competing interests. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Hair shaft elongation of mouse whiskers in Gelfoam® histoculture.
Time-course images of hair shaft growth from individual mouse whisker follicles, isolated from nestin-driven green fluorescent protein (ND-GFP) mice, histocultured on Gelfoam®. Green fluorescence was from the ND-GFP-expressing stem cells in the whisker hair follicles which were enriched during 63 days of histoculture in vitro. Hair shafts lengthened rapidly in the first 4 days, extended over 9–12 days, and remained the same length until day 63.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Graphs quantifying the increase of shaft length over time in individual follicles during Gelfoam® histoculture.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Graph quantifying the time-course increase of hair follicle stem cell GFP fluorescence intensity (A) and fluorescent area (B).
p<0.01 in increase of fluorescent area and fluorescence intensity at day 63 compared to day 1.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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References

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