Human Wound-Healing Research: Issues and Perspectives for Studies Using Wide-Scale Analytic Platforms

Abstract

Significance: Revealing the basic mechanisms in the healing process and then regulating these processes for faster healing or to avoid negative outcomes such as infection or scarring are fundamental to wound research. The normal healing process is basically known, but to thoroughly understand the very complex aspects involved, it is necessary to characterize the course of events at a higher resolution with the latest molecular techniques and methodologies. Recent Advances: Various animal models are used in wound-healing research. Rodent and pig models are the ones most often used, probably because of pre-existing sophisticated research methodologies and as the proper care and ethical use of these species are highly developed and organized to serve science throughout the world. Critical Issues: Since several animal models are used, their anatomical and physiological differences varyingly affect the translation of results on healing mechanisms. Hence, to avoid species-specific misinformation, more ways to study wound healing directly in humans are needed. Future Directions: Fortunately, novel techniques have enabled high-end molecular-level research even from small samples of tissue. Since these methods require only a small amount of patient skin, they make it possible to study wound healing directly in humans.

Kristo Nuutila, PhD

Figure 1.

Comparison of RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) methods in human ACTB loci. The track at the top is the known ACTB splicing patterns; there were two alternative starting sites, and the two sites could produce two different proteins. The following tracks are alignment histograms of (i) normal human epidermal keratinocytes (NHEK) by nonstrand-specific standard RNA-seq, (ii) NHEK by strand-specific standard RNA-seq, (iii) NHEK by capa analysis gene expression (CAGE), which is a 5′-end sequencing RNA-method, and (iv) HaCaT by STRT, which is the other 5′-end sequencing method. The tracks (i–iii) are by the ENCODE project.