Digitized Honors Theses (2002-2017)

Date of Award

5-2009

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Degree Name

BS

Department

Biomedical Sciences

Faculty Mentor

Azin Agah, Ph.D.

Advisor(s)

Julio Turrens, Ph.D., William B. Davis, Ph.D.

Abstract

In response to injury inflicted to the skin, wound healing occurs in an attempt to restore normal structure and function to the wound site. However, while repair and scar formation typically occur following injury, abnormal wound healing may also result due to disequilibrium between the phases of wound healing. One key feature of abnormal wound healing is reduced angiogenesis, the process by which new blood vessels are formed from pre-existing blood vessels. Reduced angiogenesis is also a key characteristic of scleroderma and thus wound healing can be used as a model to study this complex disease. To study angiogenesis in wound extracts, tight skin one mice were used as animal models since they possess taut, fibrotic skin similar to the skin found in scleroderma. Wild type mice with normal skin were also used for control purposes. Full thickness excisional wounds were made and harvested at days seven and fourteen following euthanasia in both tight skin and wild type mice and subsequent immunohistochemical and analysis techniques were performed. Tight skin mice wounds were found to have reduced neo-vascularization compared to wild type mice wounds. When two anti-angiogenic factors were explored to deduce their role in this reduced neo­ vascularization, it was found that TTh1P- l and TIMP-2 levels exhibited no change in tight skin mice wounds versus wild type mice wounds at both days seven and fourteen post­ injury. However, because the sample size was small, these results cannot be upheld unless the same results are produced using a larger sample size in future experiments.

Comments

© 2009 Pallavi Archana Kumbla ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Download

Share

COinS