Isolation and characterization of human hair follicle epithelial cells

The mammalian hair follicle epithelial component contains various lineages of keratinocytes as well as their progenitor/stem cells. To characterize the subpopulations contained within this component and assess their functional capacity, the development of a feasible method to isolate them is greatly needed. In this chapter we describe a standard method by which a small subset of human follicular keratinocytes can be isolated for subsequent analysis. Detailed methods for enzymatic digestion of fresh human scalp, flow cytometry, cultivation of sorted cells and a colony forming assay are described.