A few minutes ago, YouTube recommended a newly published 3-minute BBC video to me that is titled: “New skin research could help slow signs of ageing.” While watching it (embedded below), I noticed that at 2 minutes 30 seconds, it shows hair forming in lab-grown artificial skin.
My first though was “here we go again”, since I have written about several companies and labs in the past that created new skin with working hair follicles. Only to never hear from them again. While the main purpose of such research is to treat skin burns and other injuries, it has obvious positive implications for balding scalps.
Immune Regulation of Human Skin Morphogenesis
After watching the above video, I found the BBC article covering the new findings. Like the video, it is also titled: “New skin research could help slow signs of ageing.” While the article does not link to the actual study, I managed to find it and it was just published today.
As is so often the case, the title of the study in “Nature” is non-click bait and is far more technical:
“A prenatal skin atlas reveals immune regulation of human skin morphogenesis.”
I suspect that most of the global media that will cover this story will not use the word “prenatal” in the title. To be fair, even though I do so much hair and skin related reading, I would have never clicked on the above titled article, so I am glad for click-bait headlines.
Middle East based “The National” (h/t “Nick”) has an even more appropriate title for the readers of this blog:
“Human skin map provides clues on how to stop hair loss.”
According to Dr. Elena Winheim, co-first author of this “Nature” paper:
“The prenatal skin atlas provides the first molecular “recipe” for making human skin and uncovered how human hair follicles are formed before birth. These insights have amazing clinical potential and could be used in regenerative medicine, when offering skin and hair transplants, such as for burn victims or those with scarring alopecia.”
Before anyone gets too excited, I hope you remember all the initial hype behind PolarityTE (US). Not to forget the extremely slow progress in 3D skin and hair bioprinting despite the involvement of major wealthy corporations such as L’Oreal.
Getting back to the study, right of the bat, I got curious when I saw that among the three authors who jointly supervised this research was Dr. Karl Koehler. I covered him in detail in my 2020 post on hair-bearing human skin that was generated from pluripotent stem cells. The other supervisors are Dr. Sarah Teichmann and Dr. Muzlifah Haniffa. The research was led by the UK’s Wellcome Sanger Institute and Newcastle University.
Human Cell Atlas: Skin and Hair Growth
Also of significance, the article mentions that this work is part of the global efforts related to the Human Cell Atlas (Data Portal). And the specific subsection for this this particular work is called Fetal Skin. Over their, they use the title:
“Prenatal human skin morphogenesis is regulated by crosstalk between immune and non-immune cells.”
I find the whole idea behind the Human Cell Atlas very impressive. From their FAQ page:
“The Human Cell Atlas is an international collaborative consortium that is creating a comprehensive, diverse and high-resolution molecular map of the human body, charting the cell types in the healthy body, across time from development to adulthood, and eventually to old age. This enormous undertaking, on an even larger scale than the Human Genome Project, will transform our understanding of the 37.2 trillion cells in the human body in health and disease and lead to major advances in the way illnesses are diagnosed and treated.”
Hopefully this “project for all of humanity” does not turn into a for-profit, as was the case with OpenAI.