Abstract
Burn wounds are the most destructive and complicated type of skin or underlying soft tissue injury
that are exacerbated by a prolonged inflammatory response. Several cell-based therapeutic systems
through the culturing of potent stem cells on modified scaffolds have been developed to direct the
burn healing challenges. In this context, a new regenerative platform based on boron (B)
enriched-acellular sheep small intestine submucosa (AOSIS) scaffold was designed and used as a
carrier for mesenchymal stem cells derived from Wharton’s jelly (WJMSCs) aiming to promote the
tissue healing in burn-induced rat models. hWJMSCs have been extracted from human
extra-embryonic umbilical cord tissue. Thereafter, 96 third-degree burned Wistar male rats were
divided into 4 groups. The animals that did not receive any treatment were considered as group A
(control). Then, group B was treated just by AOSIS scaffold, group C was received cell-seeded
AOSIS scaffold (hWJMSCs-AOSIS), and group D was covered by boron enriched-cell-AOSIS
scaffold (B/hWJMSCs-AOSIS). Inflammatory factors, histopathological parameters, and the
expression levels of epitheliogenic and angiogenic proteins were assessed on 5, 14 and 21 d
post-wounding. Application of the B/hWJMSCs-AOSIS on full-thickness skin-burned wounds
significantly reduced the volume of neutrophils and lymphocytes at day 21 post-burning, whilst
the number of fibroblasts and blood vessels enhanced at this time. In addition, molecular and
histological analysis of wounds over time further verified that the addition of boron promoted
wound healing, with decreased inflammatory factors, stimulated vascularization, accelerated
re-epithelialization, and enhanced expression levels of epitheliogenic genes. In addition, the boron
incorporation amplified wound closure via increasing collagen deposition and fibroblast volume
and activity. Therefore, this newly fabricated hWJMSCs/B-loaded scaffold can be used as a
promising system to accelerate burn wound reconstruction through inflammatory regulation and
angiogenesis stimulation
