Co-delivery of bioactive peptides by nanoliposomes for promotion of hair growth

Hair loss is a benign, treatable and chronic disorder which will cause the worse life quality of patients over time. Bioactive peptides can be used for hair growth promotion with many advantages such as low toxicity, high selectivity and targeted specificity. However, the bioactive peptides have limited efficacy alone and difficulty in transdermal absorption into the hair growth targeted cells - dermal papilla cells (DPCs). We developed nanoliposomes loaded with copper peptide, acetyl tetrapeptide-3 and myristoyl pentapeptide-4 (CAM-NLPs) simultaneously to achieve a synergistic effect of multiple bioactive peptides combination, improve their delivery efficiency for promoting hair growth. The CAM-NLPs exhibited uniform particle sizes, high encapsulation efficiency and loading capacity for the bioactive peptides. In vitro experiments revealed that the CAM-NLPs remarkably promoted the proliferation of immortalized human keratinocytes (HaCaT) and human dermal papilla cells (HDPCs), boosted the migration ability of HDPCs and increased the secretion of collagen III, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) from HDPCs. Furthermore, it was revealed that CAM-NLPs promoted hair growth by up-regulating the expression of VEGF and β-catenin and down-regulating the expression of transforming growth factor-β1 in the skin of C57BL/6 mice in vivo via Western blotting assay. In summary, CAM-NLPs are effective transdermal co-delivery nanocarrier for alleviating hair loss in androgenetic alopecia with hair growth promotion, high safety and great potential.