MONTRÉAL – A laboratory-developed model by researchers at Université Laval is expected to allow molecules to be tested to facilitate the healing of diabetic ulcers.
The model designed by doctoral student Mathias Lemarchand under the supervision of Professor François Berthod reproduces diabetic skin in the laboratory.
The researchers used two types of cells present in the dermis – fibroblasts and keratinocytes – and treated them with a chemical that increases sugar fixation on proteins (a process called glycation) to reproduce the effects of high blood sugar that characterizes diabetes.
The mice currently used to study the healing of these wounds are imperfect models, as they heal their injuries differently, and much more effectively, than humans. The transfer of acquired knowledge to humans is therefore limited.
It was therefore important to have a model closer to human reality to advance hopes for the healing of these ulcers, which in the worst cases can lead to limb amputation.
“To be able to find new molecules that allow us to better treat these ulcers, the really important thing is to develop models that reproduce the reality of diabetic ulcers in vitro,” summarized Professor Berthod.
Dr. Berthod’s team had already developed a skin model – “which worked well,” he said – to study wound healing. This time, they wanted to push their work a little further by developing a model closer to the reality of diabetics.
It is very difficult to reproduce such diabetic skin in the laboratory, explained Professor Berthod. Diabetes is a slowly evolving disease, and it is hyperglycemia that over the years eventually impairs the skin’s healing abilities. Since it is not possible to keep a skin model in the laboratory for years, a method was needed “to accelerate the process to get as close as possible to the situation in the patient”, said the researcher.
And that’s what they succeeded in doing.
“The ultimate proof that it works is that when we compare our treated model… to induce the negative effects of hyperglycemia and a normal model, when we compare the two, we see that indeed, when we induced this glycation treatment, we have a negative impact on wound closure,” Professor Berthod said.
This model will now make it possible to test molecules that could protect against the harmful effects of hyperglycemia. One could envisage the development, one day, of a topical treatment that would be applied directly to the ulcers to facilitate healing.
The researchers are currently working on a model that would directly use the patient’s cells to model the effect of these molecules. This represents another important challenge, since these cells are so diseased that it is very difficult to get them to develop in the laboratory to obtain complete skin.
“Our goal is to develop approaches that are as cheap as possible and as accessible as possible, because we know that the problem of diabetes is becoming increasingly important,” Professor Berthod said. “The number of patients is increasing more and more, and there are all kinds of problems associated with these patients. The more patients you have to treat, the more the approaches you develop must be inexpensive and easy to apply.”
The conclusions of this study were published in the scientific journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering.
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