Reversal of Adriamycin-impaired wound healing by transforming growth factor-beta.

Impaired wound healing remains an important clinical problem. Treatment with systemic Adriamycin (doxorubicin) is known to impair wound healing in patients, and it has been used to produce animal models of impaired healing. The results of previous studies have shown that local treatment of incisions in normal rats with transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) or epidermal growth factor (EGF) stimulated early increases in tensile strength of surgical incisions in normal rats. We investigated the effects of locally applied, biosynthetic TGF-beta or EGF on the tensile strength of standardized incisions in rats treated with Adriamycin. Systemic Adriamycin treatment (8 milligrams per kilogram) produced significant decreases in wound tear strength (WTS) and wound tear energy (WTE) when compared with that of normal rats at seven and ten days (p less than 0.01). A single dose of TGF-beta (2 micrograms) in a collagen vehicle stimulated a reversal of this wound healing impairment at ten days (p less than 0.05), returning the WTS and WTE to near normal levels. A single dose of EGF (50 micrograms) in hyaluronic acid failed to increase tensile strength, probably because of formulation of EGF in a vehicle that does not prolong its release in incisions. These results suggest that exogenous growth factors may be clinically useful in stimulating healing in incisions in healing impaired conditions.