Effect of Cold Plasma on Cell Viability and Collagen Synthesis in Cultured Murine Fibroblasts**supported partly by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81372076, 51307133 and 51221005), China National Funds for Distinguished Young Scientists (No. 51125029), the Sci-Tech Project of Shaanxi Province of China (No. 2010K16-04), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (No. xkjc2013004)

Abstract

An argon atmospheric pressure plasma jet was employed to treat L929 murine fibroblasts cultured in vitro. Experimental results showed that, compared with the control cells, the treatment of fibroblasts with 15 s of plasma led to a significant increase of cell viability and collagen synthesis, while the treatment of 25 s plasma resulted in a remarkable decrease. Exploration of related mechanisms suggested that cold plasma could up-regulate CyclinD1 gene expression and down-regulate p27 gene expression at a low dose, while it could down-regulate CyclinD1 expression and up-regulate p27 expression at a higher dose, thus altering the cell cycle progression, and then affecting cell viability and collagen synthesis of fibroblasts.