Bioactive Non-Thermal Biocompatible Plasma Enhances Migration on Human Gingival Fibroblasts.

This study hypothesized that the application of low-dose non-thermal biocompatible dielectric barrier discharge plasma (DBD-NBP) to human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs) would inhibit colony formation but not cell death and induce matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) expression, extracellular matrix (ECM) degradation, and subsequent cell migration, which could result in enhanced wound healing. HGFs treated with plasma for 3 min migrated to each other across the gap faster than those in the control and 5-min treatment groups on days 1 and 3. The plasma-treated HGFs showed significantly high expression levels of the cell cycle arrest-related p21 gene and enhanced MMP activity. FAK-mediated attenuation of wound healing or actin cytoskeleton rearrangement, and plasma-mediated reversal of this attenuation supported the migratory effect of DBD-NBP. Further, we performed computer simulations to investigate the effect of oxidation on the stability and conformation of the catalytic kinase domain of FAK. We found that the oxidation of highly reactive amino acids Cys427, Met442, Cys559, Met571, Met617, and Met643 changes the conformation and increases the structural flexibility of the FAK protein and thus modulates its function and activity. Low-dose DBD-NBP-induces host cell cycle arrest, ECM breakdown, and subsequent migration, thus contributing to the enhanced wound healing process. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.