Regenerative potential of CD200- subpopulations of hair follicle bulge

Ting Sun; Sayuri Hamano; Jing Chen; Lichen Ling; Jinran Lin; Lei Yan; Tatsuto Kageyama; Fuyue Wu; Zheng Lin Tan; Wenyu Wu; Junji Fukuda

doi:10.3389/fcell.2026.1808471

Regenerative potential of CD200^- subpopulations of hair follicle bulge

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2026 Apr 23:14:1808471. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2026.1808471. eCollection 2026.

Authors

Ting Sun^{1

2}, Sayuri Hamano¹, Jing Chen², Lichen Ling², Jinran Lin³, Lei Yan^{1

4}, Tatsuto Kageyama^{1

4}, Fuyue Wu², Zheng Lin Tan², Wenyu Wu³, Junji Fukuda^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Engineering, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
² ReMed Regenerative Medicine Clinical Application Institute, Shanghai, China.
³ Department of Dermatology, Huashan Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁴ Kanagawa Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan.

Abstract

The hair follicle bulge is regarded as a reservoir of epithelial stem cells for hair regeneration. Hair follicle bulge cells are generally characterized by CD200 expression. However, the relationship between CD200⁺ bulge subpopulations and human hair regenerative capacity remains unknown. In this study, we systematically investigated the CD200- and KRT15-expressing human hair follicle bulge cells by integrating phenotypic characterization, transcriptomic profiling, and in vivo hair regeneration assays. CD200^- cells from freshly isolated human hair follicle bulge exhibited higher hair-regenerative capability. Using different culture systems, we have observed the correlation between reduced CD200 expression and increased hair regenerative capability of cultured hair follicle bulge cells. Our study refines the functional interpretation of CD200-defined bulge heterogeneity and provides insights for optimizing human bulge cell-based approaches to hair follicle regeneration.

Keywords: CD200; bulge; hair follicle regeneration; hair follicle stem cell; transcriptomic profiling.