Organoids Generate Hair-Bearing Human Skin

Researchers set out to make human skin with hair from pluripotent stem cells, cells able to become many tissue types, and test whether it could take as a graft. Over 4-5 months, signals guided the cells into cyst-like skin organoids, miniature tissues that assemble themselves. They grew pigmented hair follicles, oil-making sebaceous glands, fat-rich dermis, the skin layer beneath the surface, and early touch structures. After transplantation into wound sites in nude mice, 15 of 27 grafts, or 55%, flattened into vascularized, cornified skin and produced hairs emerging from the graft. The experiment shows that several skin components can arise together and integrate as a planar graft.