Modern hair restoration surgery helps restore hair loss or bald areas, which requires a substantial number of hair follicles from the donor area. However, in some cases, people do not have sufficient donor hair follicles for transplant surgery due to diseases, genetics, aging, other biological and environmental issues, and so on. This problem can be addressed using 3D bioprinter technology to cultivate artificial hair follicles.

This project report meticulously reviews six different methods for artificially cultivating hair follicles (HF) using bio cells and a cell-transforming environment created using 3D bioprinting technology. The six methods were 3D-bioprinting of a gelatin-alginate hydrogel for tissue-engineered hair follicle regeneration, tissue engineering of human hair follicles using a biomimetic developmental approach, bead-jet printing enabled sparse mesenchymal stem cell patterning augments skeletal muscle and hair follicle regeneration, robot-assisted in situ bioprinting of gelatin methacrylate hydrogels with stem cells induces hair follicle-inclusive skin regeneration, bioprinting of hair follicle germs for hair regenerative medicine, and using bioprinting, and spheroid culture to create a skin model with sweat glands and hair follicles.

The main disadvantages of these experimental methods are their complexity, the significantly low number of hair follicles generated, and the fact that it will take time to get approval for human trials for these new technologies. The report also proposes a procedure to overcome the disadvantages of artificially grown HF by developing a permanent hair system on the scalp.