Molecular dissection of abnormal wound healing processes resulting in keloid disease.

Keloids are locally aggressive scars that typically invade into healthy surrounding skin and cause both physical and psychosocial distress to the patient. These pathological scars occur following minimal skin trauma after a variety of causes including burns and trauma. Although the pathogenesis of keloid disease is not well understood, it is considered to be the end product of an abnormal healing process. The aim of this review was to investigate the molecular and cellular pathobiology of keloid disease in relation to the normal wound healing process. The molecular aberrances in keloids that correlate with the molecular mechanisms in normal wound healing can be categorized into three groups: (1) extracellular matrix proteins and their degradation, (2) cytokines and growth factors, and (3) apoptotic pathways. With respect to cellular involvements, fibroblasts are the most well-studied cell population. However, it is unclear whether the fibroblast is the causative cell; they are modulated by other cell populations in wound repair, such as keratinocytes and macrophages. This review presents a detailed account of individual phases of the healing process and how they may potentially be implicated in aberrant raised scar formation, which may help in clarifying the mechanisms involved in keloid disease pathogenesis.

Dual agent chemoprotection by retroviral co-expression of either MDR1 or MRP1 with the P140K mutant of O6-methylguanine-DNA-methyl transferase.

Tumour resistance to chemotherapeutic agents results in most chemotherapy being administered in a multi-agent fashion that is often associated with a high level of toxicity in highly proliferative tissues such as the haematopoietic compartment. Thus, whilst many genetic manipulation strategies aim to protect normal tissue against a single component of a multi-agent regime, it is clearly preferable to protect normal cells against all toxicities. In this study we have used retroviral gene transfer to achieve co-expression of either p-glycoprotein (MDR1) or multi-drug resistance-related protein 1 (MRP1) with the P140K mutant form of O6-methylguanine-DNA-methyl transferase (MGMT) which, unlike the wild-type protein, is insensitive to inactivation by tumour sensitisers such as O6-benzylguanine (O6-BeG) or PaTrin2. The combination of certain MDR1/MRP1 substrate drugs with O6-alkylating agents (against which MGMT confers resistance) is particularly myelotoxic. We show here that haematopoietic progenitors co-expressing mutant MGMT with an ABC-transporter exhibit resistance to combination chemotherapy in vitro. This combination of drug transporter and DNA repair function may provide an effective in vivo protection of the haematopoietic compartment during tumour ablation using combination chemotherapy.