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Red organic light-emitting diodes based photobiomodulation therapy enabling prominent hair growth

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Abstract

Hair loss can cause psychological distress. Here, red organic light-emitting diode (OLED) light source is first introduced as the photobiomodulation therapy (PBMT) for hair growth and demonstrated as a promising and non-invasive therapeutic modality for alopecia. OLED exhibits unique advantages of homogeneous irradiation, flexible in form factor, and less heat generation. These features enable OLED to be an ideal candidate for wearable PBMT light sources. A systematic study of using red OLEDs to facilitate hair growth was conducted. The results show that OLEDs excellently promote hair regrowth. OLED irradiation can increase the length of the hair by a factor of 1.5 as compared to the control, and the hair regrowth area is enlarged by over 3 times after 20 days of treatments. Moreover, the mechanism of OLED that stimulates hair follicle regeneration is investigated in-vivo by conducting a systematic controlled experiments on mice with or without OLED PBMT. Based on the comprehensive histological and immunofluorescence staining studies, two key factors are identified for red OLEDs to facilitate hair follicle regeneration: (i) increased autophagy during the anagen phase of the hair growth cycle; (ii) increased blood oxygen content promoted by the accelerated microvascular blood flow.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61875144, 91959104, 21927803, 51903182, and 51525203), the National Research Programs of China (No. 2020YFA0211100), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices (No. ZZ2102), and the Science and Technology Development Fund, Macau SAR (Nos. 0006/2021/AKP and 0051/2021/A). This work is also supported by the Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology (No. NANO-CIC) and the 111 Project and Joint International Research Laboratory of Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices.

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  1. Shuang-Qiao Sun, Jing-Jing Shen, and Yu-Fei Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Soochow University, 199 Ren’ai Road, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Shuang-Qiao Sun, Jing-Jing Shen, Yu-Fei Wang, Yu-Tong Jiang, Lin-Fu Chen, Hua Xin, Qi Sun, Liang-Sheng Liao, Qian Chen, Man-Keung Fung & Shuit-Tong Lee

  2. Macao Institute of Materials Science and Engineering (MIMSE), MUST-SUDA Joint Research Center for Advanced Functional Materials, Zhuhai MUST Science and Technology Research Institute, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau, 999078, China

    Hua Xin, Liang-Sheng Liao, Man-Keung Fung & Shuit-Tong Lee

  3. Institute of Organic Optoelectronics, Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute (JITRI), 1198 Fenhu Dadao, Wujiang, Suzhou, 215200, China

    Hua Xin, Jiang-Nan Wang, Xiao-Bo Shi, Xiao-Zhao Zhu, Liang-Sheng Liao, Man-Keung Fung & Shuit-Tong Lee

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  1. Shuang-Qiao Sun
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Correspondence to Qian Chen, Man-Keung Fung or Shuit-Tong Lee.

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Sun, SQ., Shen, JJ., Wang, YF. et al. Red organic light-emitting diodes based photobiomodulation therapy enabling prominent hair growth. Nano Res. 16, 7164–7170 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5315-1

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