Macrophages against non-healing ulcers
Biologists have learned how to make blood cells tighten wounds
Biologists from Canada has discovered a hormone, the addition of which to the blood "reprograms" cells of the immune system and forces them to begin accelerated "repair" of damaged layers of skin and other tissues, according to an article published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (Laplante et al., MFG-E8 Reprogramming of Macrophages Promotes Wound Healing by Increased bFGF Production and Fibroblast Functions).
"This therapy can be a salvation for diabetics – if it works in their body, then we will be able to avoid amputation of limbs due to non-healing wounds. In addition, it can help people with serious burns, speeding up their healing and reducing the likelihood of infection of wounds during recovery," said Jean–Francois Cailhier from the University of Montreal (in a press release Healing wounds with cell therapy – VM).
The slightest skin damage in people suffering from diabetes, HIV and a number of other diseases can cause big trouble. Bacteria get into them and non-healing ulcers occur, which often force doctors to amputate the limbs of patients or perform other dangerous operations. Recently, scientists have found out that these ulcers may be associated with the weakening of the electropole cells conducting their migration during wound overgrowth.
Callier and his colleagues found potential "conductors" of these cell migrations and transformations by observing what was happening in the skin of mice. For these experiments, scientists monitored which cells accumulated in an open wound, removed some of them and observed whether the tightening of the cut would slow down or accelerate.
These observations helped scientists identify two key components of the wound regeneration process – the MFG-E8 protein and associated macrophage cells - one of the main elements of the skin's immune system that coordinate the work of dozens of other cell types. The ingestion of MFG-E8 molecules into macrophages, as biologists have found out, leads to their "reprogramming" and causes them not to cause inflammation, but to suppress them and promote tissue regeneration.
As the first experiments showed, the introduction of this protein directly into the patient's body can cause the most powerful side effects – there are scars and other traces of overly active "repair" of the skin. Therefore, scientists had to think about how to achieve the desired effect without harm to the body.
Biologists have found a solution to this problem in blood stem cells. Scientists extracted a number of these cells from the bone marrow of mice, turned them into macrophages and treated them with MFG-E8 solution, "reprogramming" to tighten wounds. After that, biologists covered the cuts on the body of mice with a culture of these cells and monitored whether there would be any changes in the rate of their healing.
According to the researchers, accelerated wound healing was noticeable even to the naked eye – on average, wounds in such rodents were tightened about twice as fast, and the recovery rate was higher in those mice into whose wound scientists injected more cells.
Now biologists are working on adapting this technology for use in clinical experiments on volunteers. In addition, they plan to conduct experiments on animals suffering from diabetes or burns, which will help to understand whether such cells and the MFG-E8 protein can be used to help people.
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30.05.2017