Evaluation of A Pool of Biomimetic Peptides on Human Hair Follicles: A Preclinical Study

Background: Biomimetic peptides are synthetic agonists of naturally occurring growth factors and completely mimics the action of the parental molecules. They offer a great opportunity in cosmetic and dermatological applications. Since on the marketplace there are many biomimetic peptides and product containing them in association, but, unfortunately, only few peptides have strong scientifically published evidence about their own claim, we investigated the effect of a mix of octapeptide-2 (0.05%), copper tripeptide-1 (0.05%), oligopeptide-20 (0.5%), acetyl decapeptide-3 (0.5%) (mix of peptides: MGF) in human hair follicle (HFs) from AGA subjects.

Materials and Methods: 400 HFs from 10 subjects affected by AGA were cultivated in 4 different conditions: supplemented William’s E culture medium (NM) with or without MGF; William’s E culture medium without supplements (WN) with MGF presence or not. HFs elongation, staging and hair cycle score measurements were taken at 24-hour intervals until the 96th hour of cultivation. The levels of Ki-67, a marker of cellular proliferation, were determined immunohistochemically on the HFs in different condition: no medium (dried), Ringer Lactate (RL), PRP, and MGF.

Results: MGF added to NM or WNM medium induced a higher hair shaft elongation in comparison with media alone. The stimulation of hair shaft was statistically significant when measured at 96 h of treatment with MGF supplementation to the culture media (p<0.05, WM + MGFs vs WM and p<0.01, NM + MGFs vs NM).
Culture of HFs in the presence of MGF promoted hair growth anagen phase, as showed by hair cycle score decrease (p<0.05, WM + MGF vs WM and NM + MGF vs NM).
The immune fluorescence staining for Ki-67 revealed that from 4 hours up to 8 hours of treatment there was a statistically significant preservation of proliferative activity by PRP and MGF (T4 h: PRP vs RL p<0.05; PRP vs Dried p<0.01; MGF vs Dried p<0.001; MGF vs RL p<0.01; T8 h: PRP vs RL p<0.001; PRP vs Dried p<0.0001; MGF vs Dried p<0.0001; MGF vs RL p<0.0001).

Conclusion: In this preclinical study, MGF can be considered a useful therapeutic agent to stimulate hair growth by promoting anagen phase and cell proliferation.

Keywords: Biomimetic peptides; Human hair follicle; Hair growth; octapeptide-2; copper tripeptide-1; oligopeptide-20, acetyl decapeptide-3.