Regenerative Medicine Insights

Hair follicles contain several kinds of stem cells. One group, called hair follicle-associated‑pluripotent (HAP) stem cells, sits in the bulge region of the follicle and expresses the protein nestin. Laboratory studies show HAP cells can turn into many different cell types — neurons, glial cells (support cells in nerves), skin cells, smooth muscle, heart muscle, pigment cells and more [2,10,19,25]. HAP cells are easy to collect from the scalp, do not require genetic reprogramming, do not form tu