Search

The effect of a lyophilized cell lysate prepared from cultured human keratinocytes on the healing of full-thickness wounds was evaluated in an impaired healing model. Full-thickness wounds (8 mm in diameter) were made on the dorsal areas of female genetically diabetic mice C57 BL/KsJ (db/db) and their normal (db/+) littermates. Wounds were covered with an occlusive polyurethane film dressing and were treated for 5 days either with the lyophilized cell lysate from cultured human keratinocytes prepared in phosphate-buffered saline solution or with phosphate-buffered saline solution. In normal (db/+) mice, all wounds were closed 16 days after wounding, and more than 90% of the wound closure was due to wound contraction. Wound contraction accounted for a similar extent of wound closure in both lyophilized cell lysate-treated and phosphate-buffered saline solution-treated wounds. In contrast, in the diabetic (db/db) mice, after histologic examination of the wounds 32 days after wounding, four of ten lyophilized cell lysate-treated wounds and four of seven phosphate-buffered saline-treated wounds were found to be closed. Moreover, applications of lyophilized cell lysate from cultured human keratinocytes to full-thickness wounds in diabetic db/db mice significantly decreased the contribution of contraction to wound closure. Day 32 after wounding, contraction contribution to wound closure amounted to 57.7%+/- 4.7% and 80.4%+/- 3.2% (mean +/- standard error of the mean, p < 0.005) of the initial wound areas, respectively, for lyophilized cell lysate-treated and phosphate-buffered saline solution-treated wounds. At this time of wound healing, the thickness of the dermis was increased 1.7-fold by the keratinocyte cell lysate treatment, but neither epithelial migration from the wound edges nor the thickness of the regenerated epithelium were significantly affected. In conclusion, in diabetic (db/db) mice the application of lyophilized cell lysate from cultured human keratinocytes influenced the healing of the dermis and wound contraction, but had no effect on reepithelialization.

A highly active and reliable cell-free protein-synthesizing system from dry pea primary axes has been developed. The system has been optimized with respect to both overall activity and translational fidelity. Under optimal conditions, the system incorporates nearly 1,000 picomoles leucine per 50 microliters incubation mixture. At limiting tobacco mosaic virus RNA concentrations, its efficiency exceeds 1,000 picomoles leucine per picomole template molecules. The maximal size of the polypeptides coded for by tobacco mosaic virus RNA goes up to 180,000. A procedure has been worked out to reduce the endogenous template activity of the system. the dramatic increase of the activity of this pea cell-free system as compared to previous attempts can be explained by the use of Cl(-)-free buffers.

Extracts prepared from dry pea (Pisum sativum, L; cv oberon) primary axes translate efficiently their endogenous messengers in an in vitro protein synthesizing system. The native long-lived messengers are biologically fully active and direct the synthesis of a whole range of polypeptides with MW ranging up to 130,000. About 0.5% of the total in vitro synthesized polypeptides are recovered in the immunoprecipitate obtained with pea lectin antiserum. Since about one-fourth of the radioactivity in the immunoprecipitate comigrates with authentic pea lectin it is concluded that about 0.1% of the long-lived messengers code for the lectin.