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Human as the Ultimate Wound Healing Model: Strategies for Studies Investigating the Dermal Lipidome

  • Wound Care and Healing (A Friedman, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

The purpose of this review was to educate the reader of the multiple roles undertaken by the human epidermal lipidome and the experimental techniques of measuring them.

Recent Findings

Damage to skin elicits a wound healing process that is capped by the recreation of the lipid barrier. In addition to barrier function, lipids also undertake an active signaling role during wound healing. Achievement of these multiple functions necessitates a significant complexity and diversity in the lipidome resulting in a composition that is unique to the human skin. As such, any attempts to delineate the function of the lipidome during the wound healing process in humans need to be addressed via studies undertaken in humans.

Summary

The human cutaneous lipidome is unique and plays a functionally significant role in maintaining barrier and regulating wound healing. Modern mass spectrometry and Raman spectroscopy-based methods enable the investigation of epidermal lipidome with respect to those functions.

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Acknowledgments

Research reported in this publication was supported by research grants from National Institutes of Health under grant numbers HD087198 (DSW). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Additionally, this work was also supported by a Career Development Award 1 (to DSW) and via a Young Investigator Award from SCIEX for clinical lipidomic research (DSW). The project was also supported by CTSA award number UL1TR000058 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences which provides tuition and stipend funds to UOW. Lastly, services and products in support of the research project were generated by the VCU Massey Cancer Center Lipidomics Shared Resource [Developing Core], supported, in part, with funding from NIH-NCI Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA016059 as well as a shared resource grant [S10RR031535] from the National Institutes of Health. The contents of this manuscript do not represent the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences or the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Health nor the United States Government. We graciously acknowledge the generosity of Dr. Chalfant in allowing us to use the ceramide data generated by us and depicted in Fig. 1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacotherapy and Outcomes Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, PO Box 980533, 410 North 12th Street, Richmond, VA, 23298-5048, USA

    Dayanjan S. Wijesinghe

  2. C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research (CCTR), Virginia Commonwealth University, PO Box 980533, 1200 E Clay Street, Suite 2000, Richmond, VA, 23298-0261, USA

    Urszula Osinska Warncke

  3. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, 1101 East Marshall Street, Richmond, VA, 23298, USA

    Robert F. Diegelmann

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  1. Dayanjan S. Wijesinghe
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Correspondence to Dayanjan S. Wijesinghe.

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Dayanjan S Wijesinghe, Urszula Osinska Warncke, and Robert F. Diegelmann declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with animal subjects performed by any of the authors. All human studies were carried out under the approval of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of VCU-School of Medicine (IRB number 11087) and written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

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Wijesinghe, D.S., Warncke, U.O. & Diegelmann, R.F. Human as the Ultimate Wound Healing Model: Strategies for Studies Investigating the Dermal Lipidome. Curr Derm Rep 5, 244–251 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13671-016-0156-3

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