ABSTRACT
Wound healing in horses is fraught with complications. Specifically, wounds on horse limbs often develop exuberant granulation tissue (EGT) which behaves clinically like a benign tumor and resembles the human keloid, in that the evolving scar is trapped in the proliferative phase of repair, leading to fibrosis. Clues gained from the study of over-scarring in horses should eventually lead to new insights into how to prevent unwanted scar formation in humans. cDNA fragments corresponding to CTNNB1 (coding for β-catenin) and PECAM1 (equine platelet endothelial adhesion molecule-1) genes, potentially contributing to the proliferative phase of repair, were previously identified in a mRNA expression study as being up-regulated in 7 day wound biopsies from horses. This study is the first to characterize equine cDNA for CTNNB1 and PECAM1 and to document that these genes are expressed during wound repair in horses. It appears that β-catenin may be regulated in a post-transcriptional manner while PECAM1 might help thoracic wounds mount an efficient inflammatory response in contrast to what is observed in limb wounds.
