"Inhibition of Wnt/beta-catenin pathway promotes regenerative repair of cutaneous and cartilage injury" 

Bastakoty et al., FASEB J. 2015 Aug 12. pii: fj.15-275941.

• Acute wounds related to trauma, surgery, or burns are a major medical problem, driving approximately 11 million emergency room visits every year in the United States.  
• When mammalian skin is wounded, it lacks the capacity to regenerate and as a result, healing is accompanied with a fibrotic scar. 
• Thus, interventions that would enhance or direct regenerative as opposed to fibrotic pathways may serve as a therapeutic avenue in the future.
• Bastakoty et al. sought to identify signaling pathways involved in regeneration and evaluate their ability to be modulated as a means to promote regeneration without excessive scarring
• Using two murine injury models, the authors determined that the Wnt pathway is upregulated in response to cutaneuous injury, by 2-5 days post injury. The conserved Wnt/β-Catenin pathway is a group of signal transduction proteins that regulate stem cell pluripotency and cell fate decisions during development. Well-characterized inhibitors exist that block the pathway at specific steps
• Bastakoty and colleagues used three different Wnt pathway inhibitors in their models and observed that inhibition of Wnt promoted wound closure in the ear-punch wound model.
• The impact of eventually developing a therapeutic (such as a topical application of an agent that promotes regenerative cutaneous repair)  would be tremendous, as it would significantly improve the quality of life of thousands of burn and trauma survivors. Studies like the ones in this paper, begin to address this amazing possibility.