Hair-raising

Good news for anyone who feels like they’re thinning on top: researchers have finally found a way of growing hairy human skin in the lab directly from stem cells. The bad news is that this technique is still at a very small-scale experimental stage, and it’s more likely to be first turned towards developing more realistic skin grafts for wounds and burns or animal-free drug and cosmetic testing. Researchers have been growing flat sheets of simple skin cells in the lab for more than 40 years, but until now it has been impossible to recreate all the complexity of real skin, including fat, nerves and hair. In this study, adult skin cells were turned back into cells from both the upper and lower layers of skin, growing them together in the same dish. The result? Small balls of human skin just like this one, complete with sprouting hair follicles and embedded nerves (red).

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Jiyoon Lee and colleagues
• Department of Otolaryngology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Nature, June 2020