Figure 5.

Healing of wounds in GT-KO pigs treated with α-gal nanoparticles. (A, B) Excisional wounds (20 × 20 mm and ∼3 mm deep) in a representative GT-KO pig of eight pigs treated with wound dressing covered with saline or with 100 mg α-gal nanoparticles. The figure shows a representative pair of wounds from the same pig and inspected on day 13 post-treatment. Saline-treated wound (A) displays partial regrowth of the epidermis, whereas α-gal nanoparticle-treated wound (B) is covered with regenerating epidermis. No differences are observed in wound contraction indicated by the elongated shape of the tattooed dots around the wounds. (C, D) Histology of the granulation tissue under the leading front of the regenerating epidermis in saline- (C) and α-gal nanoparticle-treated wounds (D), in which the wound is almost completely covered with regenerating epidermis. There are many more blood vessels and recruited cells in α-gal nanoparticle-treated wounds than in saline-treated wounds (representative pigs of n = 8, H&E 100 × ). (E) Size of wounds measured as area not covered by regenerating epidermis in GT-KO pig wounds treated with 100 or 10 mg α-gal nanoparticles or with saline at 7, 10, or 13 days. Mean ± SD from nine pigs on day 7 and eight pigs on days 10 and 13 (modified from Ref.²⁹). To see this illustration in color, the reader is referred to the web version of this article at www.liebertpub.com/wound