The Role of Galectin-1 in Myofibroblast Activation and Wound Healing

Abstract

Dermal fibroblasts/myofibroblasts involves in the wound healing and secretes growth factors and chemoattractants to create new substrates and proteins in the extracellular matrix (ECM) Activation of fibroblasts plays a key role in the wound healing and injury repair Galectin-1(Gal-1) is a β - galactose - binding lectins and involves in many physiological functions such as apoptosis proliferation invasion and metastasis We have indicated that Gal-1 induced up-regulation of ?-SMA a marker of myofibroblasts in human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs) However the mechanism of Gal-1 induced myofibroblast activation was still unclear In vitro study we found that Gal-1 played an inducer in myofibroblast activation migration and proliferation by triggering cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) production NADPH oxidase 4 (NOX4 a ROS producing protein) was up-regulated in Gal-1-induced myofibroblast activation Similar to TGF-β1-induced myofibroblast activation Gal-1 stimulated phosphorylation of Smad3 which was the upstream of NOX4 Moreover Gal-1 induced Smad3/NOX4 pathway though Neuropilin-1/TGFBR1 in myofibroblast activation In vivo study Gal-1 also turned on the Smad3/NOX4 pathway during dermal myofibroblast activation and dermal wound healing To be a clinical approach in the future we made several cutaneous wounds per mouse and subcutaneously injected purified Gal-1 on the wound areas as animal experiments As expected Gal-1 accelerated general and pathological (STZ-induced diabetes mellitus) wounds healing Taken together Gal-1 may be a potential therapeutic target in pathological or imperfect wound healing

Date of Award	2014 Aug 21
Original language	English
Supervisor	Yuh-Ling Chen (Supervisor)