The Deadliest Kind Of Skin Cancer Might Originate In Your Hair

A new study has found some of the most deadly skin cancer to be originating from hair follicles.

Hair follicles are found within layers of the skin where immature pigment-secreting cells develop cancer-causing mutations and then get exposed to normal hair growth signals.

Previous studies have reported that sunlight was a major risk factor for skin cancer, but this study argues that the triggers are always present in normal follicles.

The researchers from the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at NYU School of Medicine and Perlmutter Cancer Center suggests that unlike normal counterparts, cancerous pigment stem cells migrate from follicles to establish skin cancer in the surrounding skin surface spreading deeper.

The study’s lead author Mayumi Ito Suzuki opined that, by confirming that oncogenic pigment cells in hair follicles are a bona fide source of skin cancer, it offers a better understanding of melanoma’s biology and new ways to counter it.

In human development, a single stem cell develops into an embryo to become a fetus that is made of numerous cell types. It then divides, multiplies and specializes until they become capable of playing the role of a vital organ such as nerves or skin. Stem cells can become more than one type of cell and can shift between them. Without understanding the cellular origin of a particular kind of skin cancer, it remains impossible to find out how this occurs after normal melanocytes acquire cancerous mutations.

This study points out that apart from other factors such as ultraviolet radiation from sunlight or tanning lamps, hair follicles can be an intrinsic factor for the most deadly types of skin cancers like melanoma. The stem cells that have acquired malignant characteristics travel through the hair follicle shaft and outwards on to the skin and forms melanoma tumors that invade deeper into the tissues. This research was carried out in bioengineered mice and was also validated using human samples.

The lead researcher Qi Sun opined that their mouse model has been the first one to demonstrate that follicular cancerous melanocyte stem cells can lead to melanomas and that this discovery paves the way towards identifying new diagnostics and treatments for melanoma.

“While our findings will require confirmation in further human testing, they argue that melanoma can arise in pigment stem cells originating both in follicles and in skin layers, such that some melanomas have multiple stem cells of origin,” he said.