Client-specific platform for quantitative hair biology screening

Overview

Creative Scientist, Inc. has developed a client-specific platform designed for the quantitative screening of compounds influencing hair growth-associated biology. This innovative solution employs a 96-well skin/dermal equivalent system built from human keratinocytes, hair follicle bulge stem cells, and dermal papilla-like cells. The platform is tailored for concentration-response analysis, providing a scalable and biologically relevant method to evaluate compounds that affect hair growth processes. This system enables parallel assessments of epithelial stem-cell fate and mesenchymal support-cell fate, crucial for understanding hair biology.

Technical specifications

Key features:

• Scalable 96-well format: Allows for simultaneous evaluation of multiple compounds across various concentrations.
• Human-cell modeling: Incorporates biologically relevant human keratinocytes and stem cells to replicate follicle-associated processes.
• Fluorescent reporters: Utilizes optimized fluorescent reporters to monitor bulge-cell and DPC-like-cell fate.
• Inflammatory sensing: Employs NFκB-luciferase and IL8-promoter luciferase as primary and secondary readouts for inflammation detection.
• Secreted-factor analysis: Media collection enables analysis of secreted factors.

Technology readiness level

This technology is currently at Technology Readiness Level 2, indicating that the core concept and components have been established in a lab setting. A 12-month proof-of-concept program is planned to further validate and optimize the assay configurations, aiming to deliver a comprehensive dataset and workflow for next-stage expansion.