KGF-1 for Wound Healing in Animal Models
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Keratinocyte growth factor-1 (KGF-1) is a member of the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) family FGF7 and is expressed in normal and wounded skin. KGF-1 is massively produced in the early stages of the wound healing process as well as during the later remodeling process (1 , 2 ). We have studied the effects of the electroporation of a KGF-1 plasmid into excisional wounds of different rodent models mimicking diseases known to impair the normal wound healing process.
We have used a genetically diabetic mouse model and a septic rat model in our experiments, and we have shown improvement of the healing rate (92% of the wounds are healed at day 12 vs. 40% of the control), the quality of epithelialization (histological score of 3.3 vs. 1.5), and the density of new blood vessels (85% more new blood vessels in the superficial layers than that of the control) (3 , 4 ). Considering these results, we believe we can further explore the treatment modalities for using the electroporation-assisted transfection of DNA plasmid expression vectors of growth factors to enhance cutaneous wound healing.
