For the past 30 years, Professor Giulio Gabbiani and his team at the Université de Genève have been interested in the role of myofibroblasts in wound contraction. Myofibroblasts, specialized fibroblasts expressing the protein alpha-smooth muscle actin, are instrumental in wound contraction during normal wound healing. Tissue shortening is then stabilized by synthesis of extracellular matrix, collagen in particular.
More precisely, alpha-smooth muscle actin within myofibroblasts becomes organized in filamentous bundles, called stress fibers, that allow the retractile movement producing wound contraction.
But in a condition know as hypertrophic scarring, skin deformations stem from the inappropriate action of these stress fibers that for unknown reasons persist even after the epithelialization of the wound.
The team at the University of Geneva has isolated a sequence of alpha-smooth muscle actin that, once injected in isolated myofibroblasts, inhibits their contraction. Moreover, the same sequence applied to an experimental wound significantly diminishes wound contraction and skin deformation.
Based on these results, Gabbiani and his team suggest that this alpha-smooth muscle actin sequence has a potential therapeutic activity.
The pharmaceutical firm UCB-Bioproducts has patented this sequence and is working on the production of a commercial preparation. The clinical tests should start at the beginning of next year.
Professor Gabbiani is publishing in the May issue of Nature Reviews - Molecular Cell Biology a review article on the biology of the myofibroblast and its role in normal and pathological wound healing.
16-May-2002
