Scars a problem? Know how to heal it: Study

Are you tired of scars and wounds? If yes then researchers have found a way to heal the regenerated skin rather than scar tissue by transforming the common cell into the fat cell.

Fat cells also known as adipocytes are normally found in the skin, but it gets lost when wounds heal as scars.

Scar tissues do not have hair follicles associated with it, which is another reason which gives an abnormal appearance to it from rest of the skin.

The most common cells found in healing wounds are myofibroblasts, which were thought to only form a scar.

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Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in the US used these characteristics as the basis for their work changing the already present myofibroblasts into fat cells that do not cause scarring.

"Essentially, we can manipulate wound healing so that it leads to skin regeneration rather than scarring," said George Cotsarelis from Penn.

"The secret is to regenerate hair follicles first. After that, the fat will regenerate in response to the signals from those follicles," Cotsarelis.

Now, they have discovered additional factors actually produced by the regenerating hair follicle to convert the surrounding myofibroblasts to regenerate as fat instead of forming a scar.

That fat will not form without the new hair, but once it does, the new cells are indistinguishable from the pre-existing fat cells, giving the healed wound a natural look instead of leaving a scar. As they examined the question of what was sending the signal from the hair to the fat cells, researchers identified a factor called Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP).

It instructs the myofibroblasts to become fat. This signalling was groundbreaking on its own, as it changed what was previously known about myofibroblasts.

"Typically, myofibroblasts were thought to be incapable of becoming a different type of cell," said Cotsarelis. "However our work shows we have the ability to influence these cells and that they can be efficiently and stably converted into adipocytes," Cotsarelis added.

(With PTI Input)