Effects of Galectin-3 on Cutaneous Wound Healing

Some deeper injuries require skin healing, which needs to be as successful as possible so the organ does not lose its functionality and interaction with the environment. Galectin-3 (Gal-3) is a protein from lectin family capable of pentamerizing and interacting with carbohydrates depending on the tissue, regulating biological events, such as inflammation and tissue repair. The objective of that work is analyze the Galectin-3 distribution in the skin during the wound healing process. To this end, an experiment was carried out comparing two groups of C57BL/6 mice during the healing process, the wild group, which normally produces Gal-3, and the knockout group for Lgals3 gene, which does not produce Gal-3. Lesions of 1cm² were made on mice’s back, photographs and measurements of contraction of the lesions were taken for macroscopic analysis. The injured tissue was collected on days 3 and 7 after injury, for histological analysis, including staining for hematoxylin/eosin, toluidine blue, gomori trichrome and picrosirius red, immunohistochemistry for Gal-3 and α-SMA, immunofluorescence for IBA-1 was also performed, and blood, bone marrow and spleen were collected for Gal-3 analysis by flow cytometry. Our macroscopy findings demonstrated that in total healing time, wild-type animals healed faster compared to Gal-3 knockout animals. Under microscopy it was possible to observe more inflammatory infiltrate in Gal-3 knockout animals 3 days after injury, compared to wild-type animals. Our findings together demonstrated that superficial injuries with an acute inflammatory response require Gal-3 for faster healing. In addition to observing its different behavior in tissues with a more inflamed profile and higher cell density, compared to less inflamed tissues with lower cell density. This work proposes studies with Gal-3 application after the injury to anticipate healing, in addition to proposing further studies relating the tissue remodeling phase and Gal-3 in skin healing.