A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE PROLIFERATION AND DIFFERENTIATION CHARACTERISTICS OF EPIDERMAL STEM CELLS IN NORMAL SKIN AND SCAR OF CHILDREN / 解放军医学杂志

ABSTRACT

To study the location and expression characteristics of epidermal stem cells in normal skin and scar epidermis of children, and to explore the relationship between the differences of these two epidermal stem cells and wound healing after burn. ?1 integrin and keratin 19 (K19) were used as the biochemical markers to identify stem cells and transit amplifying cell, keratin 14 (K14) and keratin 10 (K10) were used as the markers for post-mitotic cells and terminally-differentiated cells, respectively. Normal skin and scar tissue were obtained from children of 4 to 12 years of age. Elivision two-step immunohistochemistry was used. The results showed that in the immunostained tissue sections, the positive ?1 integrin and K19 expression cells were observed in 2～3 layers above the basal layer, whereas K10 expression cells were observed in all epidermal cells except basal cell layer in the scar tissue. Observations revealed that the number of stem cells and transit amplifying cells were less in the scar tissue than that in the normal skin, the differentiation process of scar epidermal stem cells was different from that of normal skin, and the proportion between post-mitotic cells and terminally-differentiated cells was abnormal. The results indicated that the self-renewal ability of the scar epidermis was lowered, and the differentiation process of it was deranged, and this might be considered to be a reason of abnormality of structure and function of the epidermis of scar tissue, and its poorer ability in wound healing.