Evidence That Mast Cells Are Not Required for Healing of Splinted Cutaneous Excisional Wounds in Mice

Allison C Nauta,Michael T Longaker,Monica Grova,Stephen J Galli,Daniel T Montoro,Andrew Zimmermann,Mindy Tsai,Geoffrey C Gurtner,Christian Taube

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059167

Abstract

Wound healing is a complex biological process involving the interaction of many cell types to replace lost or damaged tissue. Although the biology of wound healing has been extensively investigated, few studies have focused on the role of mast cells. In this study, we investigated the possible role of mast cells in wound healing by analyzing aspects of cutaneous excisional wound healing in three types of genetically mast cell-deficient mice. We found that C57BL/6-KitW-sh/W-sh, WBB6F1-KitW/W-v, and Cpa3-Cre; Mcl-1fl/fl mice re-epithelialized splinted excisional skin wounds at rates very similar to those in the corresponding wild type or control mice. Furthermore, at the time of closure, scars were similar in the genetically mast cell-deficient mice and the corresponding wild type or control mice in both quantity of collagen deposition and maturity of collagen fibers, as evaluated by Masson’s Trichrome and Picro-Sirius red staining. These data indicate that mast cells do not play a significant non-redundant role in these features of the healing of splinted full thickness excisional cutaneous wounds in mice.

Highlights

Successful wound healing involves coordinated interactions between many different cell types
Our finding that the rates of wound healing, as assessed by re-epithelialization of the wound surface, were nearly identical in each of the three types of mast celldeficient mice and the corresponding control mice suggests that the non-redundant contribution of mast cells to the rate of wound closure in this model is likely to be negligible
After establishing that there were no differences in the time to closure between excisional wounds created in mast cell-deficient mice and the corresponding control mice, we evaluated the quality of repair in terms of wound size, quantity of collagen, and collagen microarchitecture

Summary

Introduction

Successful wound healing involves coordinated interactions between many different cell types. There has been considerable speculation that mast cells can play important roles in wound healing, in the early phases, when inflammation and angiogenesis allow clearance of debris and the delivery of nutrients to the wound bed [7,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. Mast cells can produce many growth factors with the potential to contribute to wound healing through effects on blood vessels [7,20,21,22], as well as other products that can have complex effects on fibroblast proliferation and function [14,17,23,24,25]

Methods

Results

Conclusion