Dr. Angela Christiano and her team from Columbia University are back in the headlines for a range of new hair growth discoveries, one of them being progress on the 3D printing of hair follicles.

3D Follicles In The Dish

It’s no secret that Angela Christiano has been studying the biology of hair follicles for decades. She has studied hair follicle genetics, immune response in hair follicles, and dermal papilla cell culturing in an effort to discover new cures for hair loss. The bulk of her research in DP cell culturing has been done alongside Dr. Colin Jahoda of Durham University who is known as the “godfather” of hair follicle cell research. Over the past several years, Jahoda and Christiano have even been working on a biotech company to commercialize successful hair follicle research which I will get into later in this article. One of the greatest hurdles to overcome in hair follicle cloning has been creating an environment for dermal papilla cells to grow in which mimicked the natural human scalp biology. The below video explains how Christiano and her team were able to successfully create the right environment for hair follicles to grow in.

According to the publication from Columbia University, Christiano and team used 3D printing to create a more optimal environment for growing hair follicles. The process is described in detail as follows:

“The researchers used 3D printing to create plastic molds with long, thin extensions only half a millimeter wide.

After human skin was engineered to grow around the mold, hair follicle cells from human volunteers were placed into the deep wells and topped by cells that produce keratin. The cells were fed a cocktail of growth factors spiked with ingredients, including JAK inhibitors, that the lab has found stimulates hair growth. 

After three weeks, human hair follicles appeared and started creating hair.”

Engineered Hair Follicle Research. Credit: Angela Christiano / Columbia University Irving Medical Center

It’s interesting to note in that quote the hair follicles were not only feed growth factors which are necessary for the proper biological formation of hair follicles, but they were also fed JAK inhibitors which we know from a recent Follicle Thought Aclaris article have been found to stimulate hair growth through the TREM2+ mechanism. 

After discovering years ago that JAK inhibitors had the capability of activating the growth or “anagen” phase of a hair follicle, Christiano and researches delved further into the JAK-STAT pathway to find out exactly how it could manipulate the hair follicle growth cycle. The outcome of that research was the discovery of a new type of immune cell called a trichophage. These trichophages produce a substance called Oncostatin M which keeps hair follicles in a resting phase. If the production of Oncostatin M is blocked, the hair follicle begins to grow again. Christiano and her team are undoubtedly looking for new small molecule drugs and antibodies which could block the production of Oncostatin M in hair follicles. 

The Rapunzel Company

The next most important step for Christiano is to now take this discovery into the clinic for human use. It seems she is well prepared to do so, as she has been working on her private hair follicle cloning company Rapunzel Biosciences for the past several years. The project is a culmination of the research that Christiano has done alongside Dr. Colin Jahoda and the two of them account for some of the most advanced hair follicle cell culturing research in the world.

The website for Rapunzel Biosciences showed up online earlier this year around February and that seems to coincide with a research paper that Christiano and Jahoda published on December 13 2018 titled: “Tissue engineering of human hair follicles using a biomimetic developmental approach.”

In the latest article from Columbia, it mentions that the new 3D printing method needs to be optimized, though “engineered human hair follicles created in this way could generate an unlimited source of new hair follicles for patients undergoing robotic hair restoration surgery.” Christiano describes this method as creating a “hair farm”, or a grid of hair follicles that have the correct shape and biology which could be transplanted into human scalps.

Another exciting aspect of this research is the ability to screen new drugs on hair follicles created in a petri dish. Christiano thinks this approach will be appealing and useful for pharmaceutical companies. New compounds and re-purposed “old compounds” could be applied to the engineered hair follicles and then observed for hair growth. The follicles that obtained hair growth from the compounds could further be observed to determine the biological mechanism within the hair follicle which caused the hair growth. Exciting stuff.