Scientists from the Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine, Olomouc, Czechia, have developed a less stressful and painful way to gather biological data for studies with rodents.
The team found that hair follicles provide a plentiful and easily accessible source of biological material, such as live cells, which are needed to study ageing-related diseases, including cancer.
Previously, live tissue had been gathered through invasive biopsies of the rodents.
In collaboration with the Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Denmark, and, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, the team developed a suction-based device for collecting hair follicles to provide enough material.
“Our results highlight the value of hair follicles as a biological material for convenient in vivo sampling and processing in both translational research and routine applications, with a broad range of ethical and logistic advantages over currently used biopsy-based approaches,” said the authors in the journal Aging.