AsianScientist (Aug. 26, 2014) – An international team of scientists has uncovered a new way by which wounds repair themselves. Reported in Nature Physics, this finding has exciting implications for the development of treatments and drugs that speed up healing.
Current research has already established two processes at play in mending injury in the body. One involves the “purse-string” mechanism where a ring of proteins forms at the edge of a wound and tightens like the strings of a purse. The second is “cell crawling”, where cells move across the gap using arm-like projections to close the hole.
Professor Benoit Ladoux, co-principal investigator at Mechanobiology Institute under the National University of Singapore, and colleagues created a technique to measure the cell-generated nanoscale forces behind wound healing. Through experiments and computational modelling, they found that the two existing mechanisms are insufficient to fully explain the process of wound healing.
At the early stages, traction forces point away from the wound, showing that wound closure is initially driven by cell crawling. At later stages, forces pointing towards the wound were observed.
The investigators discovered a new mechanism whereby cells gather and exert structural and mechanical forces on the underlying tissue. The contractions enable the cells to close the wound by cooperatively pressing down on the underlying tissue, thus quickening the healing.
The work provides an understanding on tissue repair, which will help doctors in the treatment of acute and chronic diseases. This is especially important in the elderly or patients with certain conditions that make recovery longer.
The article can be found at: Brugués et al. (2014) Forces Driving Epithelial Wound Healing.
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Source: National University of Singapore.
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