Reversibly immortalized keratinocytes (iKera) facilitate re-epithelization and skin wound healing: Potential applications in cell-based skin tissue engineering

Skin injury is repaired through a multi-phase wound healing process of tissue granulation and re-epithelialization. Any failure in the healing process may lead to chronic non-healing wounds or abnormal scar formation. Although significant progress has been made in developing novel scaffolds and/or cell-based therapeutic strategies to promote wound healing, effective management of large chronic skin wounds remains a clinical challenge. Keratinocytes are critical to re-epithelialization and wound healing. Here, we investigated whether exogenous keratinocytes, in combination with a citrate-based scaffold, enhanced skin wound healing. We first established reversibly immortalized mouse keratinocytes (iKera), and confirmed that the iKera cells expressed keratinocyte markers, and were responsive to UVB treatment, and were non-tumorigenic. In a proof-of-principle experiment, we demonstrated that iKera cells embedded in citrate-based scaffold PPCN provided more effective re-epithelialization and cutaneous wound healing than that of either PPCN or iKera cells alone, in a mouse skin wound model. Thus, these results demonstrate that iKera cells may serve as a valuable skin epithelial source when, combining with appropriate biocompatible scaffolds, to investigate cutaneous wound healing and skin regeneration.