Protective Effect of Hydroxygenkwanin against Hair Graying Induced by X-Ray Irradiation and Repetitive Plucking

Nobuhiko Taguchi; Ryosuke Kitai; Takuya Ando; Toshihiro Nishimura; Hitomi Aoki; Takahiro Kunisada

doi:10.1016/j.xjidi.2022.100121

Protective Effect of Hydroxygenkwanin against Hair Graying Induced by X-Ray Irradiation and Repetitive Plucking

JID Innov. 2022 Mar 16;2(4):100121. doi: 10.1016/j.xjidi.2022.100121. eCollection 2022 Jul.

Authors

Nobuhiko Taguchi^{1

2}, Ryosuke Kitai¹, Takuya Ando¹, Toshihiro Nishimura², Hitomi Aoki¹, Takahiro Kunisada¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Tissue and Organ Development, Regeneration, and Advanced Medical Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu University, Gifu, Japan.
² General Research & Development Institute, Hoyu Co, Ltd, Nagakute, Japan.

Abstract

Hair graying in mice is caused by various injuries such as X-ray radiation and repeated plucking that ultimately damage melanocytes and their stem cells (melanocyte stem cells). In X-ray‒induced hair graying, injuries first manifest as a loss-of-niche function of hair follicular keratinocyte stem cells to maintain melanocyte stem cells. Thus, we hypothesized that hair follicular keratinocyte stem cells could be a practical target to prevent hair graying. In this study, we investigated the in vivo effect of the flavonoid hydroxygenkwanin, which has been shown to exert the best protection on human epidermal keratinocytes against in vitro X-ray‒induced cytological effects, using X-ray‒induced and repeated hair plucking‒induced hair graying mice models. We found that hydroxygenkwanin exerted a remarkable effect in preventing hair graying; however, when receptor Y kinase Kit-mutant mice were used, no prevention effect was observed. Therefore, we propose that Kit signaling might be involved in the hydroxygenkwanin-induced protective effect against hair graying.

Keywords: DCF, dichlorofluorescein; HFKSC, hair follicular keratinocyte stem cell; HGK, hydroxygenkwanin; KC, keratinocyte; McSC, melanocyte stem cell; NHEK, normal human epidermal keratinocyte; WT, wild type.