Xiaowei “George” Xu, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and colleagues have devised a method for converting adult cells into epithelial stem cells (EpSCs), the first time anyone has achieved this in either humans or mice. The epithelial stem cells, when implanted into immunocompromised mice, regenerated the different cell types of human skin and hair follicles, and even produced structurally recognizable hair shaft, raising the possibility that they may eventually enable hair regeneration in people. The paper "Generation of folliculogenic human epithelial stem cells from induced pluripotent stem cells" was recently published in Nature Communications.

Read the Department of Communications news release.