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Updated: Jul 7, 2026

Isolating Hair Follicle Stem Cells and Epidermal Keratinocytes from Dorsal Mouse Skin
Published on: April 29, 2016
Contractile smooth muscle cells derived from hair-follicle stem cells
Jin Yu Liu1, Hao Fan Peng, Stelios T Andreadis
1Bioengineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, 908 Furnas Hall, North Campus, Amherst, NY 14260, USA.
Aims:
We hypothesized that hair-follicle stem cells can differentiate toward smooth contractile muscle cells, providing an autologous cell source for cardiovascular tissue regeneration.
Methods And Results:
Smooth muscle progenitor cells (SMPCs) were obtained from ovine hair follicles using a tissue-specific promoter and fluorescence-activated cell sorting. Hair-follicle smooth muscle progenitor cells (HF-SMPCs) expressed several markers of vascular smooth muscle including alpha-actin, calponin, myosin heavy chain (MHC), caldesmon, smoothelin, and SM22. HF-SMPCs were highly proliferative and showed high clonogenic potential without any signs of chromosomal abnormalities as evidenced by karyotype analysis. HF-SMPCs compacted fibrin hydrogels to a similar extent as vascular smooth muscle cells from ovine umbilical veins (V-SMCs), indicating the development of the force-generating machinery. In addition, cylindrical tissue equivalents prepared with HF-SMPCs displayed significant contractility in response to vasoactive agonists including KCl and the thromboxane A2 mimetic U46619, suggesting that these cells had developed receptor and non-receptor-mediated pathways of contractility. Finally, transforming growth factor-beta1 promoted differentiation of HF-SMPCs toward a mature SMC phenotype as suggested by increased expression of MHC and enhanced matrix compaction.
Conclusion:
Our results suggest that hair follicles may be an easily accessible, autologous, and rich source of functional SMPC for cardiovascular tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
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