Abstract
The four-herb Chinese medicine ANBP is a pulverized mixture of four herbs including Agrimonia Eupatoria (A), Nelumbo Nucifera Gaertn (N), Boswellia Carteri (B) and Pollen Typhae Angustifoliae (P). The combination of the four herbs was first described in Chinese canonical medicine about 2000 years ago for treatment of various trauma disorders, such as hemostasis, antiinflammatory, analgesia, and wound healing, etc. However, the precise mechanisms of ANBP are still unclear. In our study, using rabbit ear hypertrophic scar models of full-thickness skin defect, we showed that local ANBP treatment not only significantly enhanced wound healing by relieving inflammation, increasing formation of granulation tissue and accelerating re-epithelialization, but also reduced scar formation by decreasing collagen production, protuberant height and volume of scars, and increasing collagen maturity. We demonstrated that these effects of ANBP are associated with transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1-mediated signalling pathways through Smad-dependent pathways. ANBP treatment significantly increased expression of TGF-β1 and Smad2/3 mRNA at the early stage of wound healing, and led to markedly decrease expression of TGF-β1 and Smad2/3 compared with the control group after 14 days post-wounding. Taken together, our results defined a bidirectional regulation role of ANBP for TGF-β1/Smad pathway in promoting wound healing and alleviating scar formation, which may be an effective therapy for human wounds at the earliest stage.
Publication types
-
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
MeSH terms
-
Animals
-
Cicatrix, Hypertrophic / genetics
-
Cicatrix, Hypertrophic / pathology*
-
Cicatrix, Hypertrophic / physiopathology
-
Cicatrix, Hypertrophic / prevention & control*
-
Collagen / metabolism
-
Drugs, Chinese Herbal / pharmacology*
-
Ear / pathology
-
Ear / physiopathology
-
Extracellular Matrix / drug effects
-
Extracellular Matrix / metabolism
-
Gene Expression Regulation / drug effects
-
Inflammation Mediators / metabolism
-
Powders
-
Rabbits
-
Signal Transduction / drug effects*
-
Smad Proteins / metabolism
-
Temperature
-
Transforming Growth Factor beta1 / metabolism*
-
Wound Healing / drug effects*
Substances
-
Drugs, Chinese Herbal
-
Inflammation Mediators
-
Powders
-
Smad Proteins
-
Transforming Growth Factor beta1
-
Collagen
Grants and funding
This research was supported in part by the National Basic Science and Development Program (973 Programme, 2012CB518103 and 2012CB518105), the 863 Projects of Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2013AA020105 and 2012AA020502), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81121004, 81230041, 31100705, 30901564, and 81101883), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2013M542517), the Beijing Novel Program (2008B53, 2009A038), the Science and Technology Project of Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Department (2012FJ3012) and the Scientific Research Project of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Hunan Province (2012111). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.