SAN DIEGO, March 29, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Scientists at a private biotech lab in California have shown a relationship between stem cells found in hair follicles and brain cells. Until recently, most researchers looking into stem cells thought that adult stem cells were of limited use, but an explosion of recent findings are showing that their flexibility is equal to that of embryo stem cells. Adult stem cells, moreover, present no medical or ethical difficulties.
“We were able to recently make the hypothesis that hair-follicle stem cells could form neurons and other non-follicle cell types when we observed that hair-follicle stem cells expressed the protein nestin, which is also expressed in neural stem cells,” said Robert Hoffman, professor of surgery at the University of California at San Diego and president of AntiCancer, Inc.
The experiments used a gene produced by glowing jellyfish to make skin cells of mice glow bright green. The technique is a common one used to create a marker to find certain types of cells.
The discovery of a connection between hair follicle cells and neurons was accidental. AntiCancer President Robert Hoffman said, “What we wanted to do was image the stem cells in the brain.” Instead, they discovered the entire mouse, not just the brain cells reacted to the gene treatment.
When the whole mouse was glowing, Hoffman said, “we knew at that point that there was a relationship between the stem cells of the hair follicle and the stem cells of the brain.”
The next step was culturing the follicle stem cells in the lab. “We put them in culture,” said Hoffman, “and under conditions where brain stem cells would form neurons, the hair follicle stem cells also formed neurons. We also injected some of these stem cells into the skin of mice and they formed neurons there, too.”