Hair organ regeneration via the bioengineered hair follicular unit transplantation.

Organ regenerative therapy aims to reproduce fully functional organs to replace organs that have been lost or damaged as a result of disease, injury, or aging. For the fully functional regeneration of ectodermal organs, a concept has been proposed in which a bioengineered organ is developed by reproducing the embryonic processes of organogenesis. Here, we show that a bioengineered hair follicle germ, which was reconstituted with embryonic skin-derived epithelial and mesenchymal cells and ectopically transplanted, was able to develop histologically correct hair follicles.