Wound healing is an intrinsic process directed towards the restoration of damaged or lost tissue. The development of a dressing material having the ability to control the multiple aspects of the wound environment would be an ideal strategy to improve wound healing. Though natural silk proteins, fibroin, and sericin have demonstrated tissue regenerative properties, the efficacy of bioengineered silk proteins on wound healing is seldom assessed. Furthermore, silk proteins sans contaminants, having low molecular masses, and combining with other bioactive factors can hasten the wound healing process. Herein, recombinant silk proteins, fibroin and sericin, and their fusions with cecropin B were evaluated for their wound-healing effects using in vivo rat model. The recombinant silk proteins demonstrated accelerated wound closure in comparison to untreated wounds and treatment with Povidone. Among all groups, the treatment with recombinant sericin-cecropin B (RSC) showed significantly faster healing, greater than 90% wound closure by Day 12 followed by recombinant fibroin-cecropin B (RFC) (88.86%). Furthermore, histological analysis and estimation of hydroxyproline showed complete epithelialization, neovascularization, and collagenisation in groups treated with recombinant silk proteins. The wound healing activity was further verified by in vitro scratch assay using HADF cells, where the recombinant silk proteins induced cell proliferation and cell migration to the wound area. Additionally, wound healing-related gene expression showed recombinant silk proteins stimulated the upregulation of EGF and VEGF and regulated the expression of TGF-β1 and TGF-β3. Our results demonstrated the enhanced healing effects of the recombinant silk fusion proteins in facilitating complete tissue regeneration with scar-free healing. Therefore, the recombinant silks and their fusion proteins have great potential to be developed as smart bandages for wound healing.

中文翻译：

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生物工程化和功能化的丝蛋白加速大鼠和人类真皮成纤维细胞的伤口愈合。

伤口愈合是一个内在过程，旨在修复受损或丢失的组织。开发能够控制伤口环境的多个方面的敷料材料将是改善伤口愈合的理想策略。尽管天然丝蛋白、丝心蛋白和丝胶蛋白已显示出组织再生特性，但很少评估生物工程丝蛋白对伤口愈合的功效。此外，丝蛋白无污染物，分子量低，结合其他生物活性因子可以加速伤口愈合过程。在此，使用体内大鼠模型评估了重组丝蛋白、丝心蛋白和丝胶蛋白及其与天蚕素 B 的融合物的伤口愈合效果。与未经治疗的伤口和用聚维酮治疗相比，重组丝蛋白表现出加速的伤口闭合。在所有组中，重组丝胶素-天蚕素 B (RSC) 治疗显示出明显更快的愈合，第 12 天伤口闭合率超过 90%，随后是重组丝心蛋白-天蚕素 B (RFC) (88.86%)。此外，羟脯氨酸的组织学分析和评估表明，在用重组丝蛋白处理的组中，上皮细胞完全形成、新血管形成和胶原形成。伤口愈合活性通过使用 HADF 细胞的体外划痕试验进一步验证，其中重组丝蛋白诱导细胞增殖和细胞迁移到伤口区域。此外，伤口愈合相关基因表达显示重组丝蛋白刺激EGF和VEGF的上调并调节TGF-β1和TGF-β3的表达。我们的结果证明了重组丝融合蛋白在促进完全组织再生和无疤痕愈合方面的增强愈合效果。因此，重组丝及其融合蛋白具有开发为伤口愈合智能绷带的巨大潜力。