The First Description of the Hair Follicle Bulge
Posted on 11/10/2011
The First Description of the Hair Follicle Bulge by Franz von Leydig More than 20 years ago, Cotsarelis et al. [1] published an article in which they showed that a region of the mouse hair follicle known as the ‘bulge’ contains a population of slow-cycling label-retaining cells.
Additional studies revealed that these cells are multipotent stem cells, whose activation during early anagen allows the initiation of a new hair cycle (the so-called ‘bulge activation hypothesis’ [2] ). Since then, the biological properties of the bulge stem cells have been intensively studied [3, 4] . Although additional sites bearing stem cells have been identified along the hair follicle [5, 6] , the importance of the bulge as the essential reservoir of hair follicle stem cells remains undisputable.
Marlon R. Schneider
Institute of Molecular Animal Breeding and Biotechnology, Gene Center, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich,
Munich , Germany
Dermatology 2011;223:29–31
DOI: 10.1159/000330556
Published online: August 31, 2011
