Lu Huang, Xinran Ye, Yifan Zhang, Chia-Kang Ho, Qingfeng Li
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: The mouse fetal intrauterine wound healing model is crucial and commonly used for investigating mechanisms and evaluating potential therapies for scarless skin regeneration compared to fibrotic healing. However, traditional intrauterine surgery remains technically challenging and understudied, which is associated with high maternal mortality and pregnancy loss, prompting us to refine the surgical protocol. Here, we report how the choice of surgical and mating procedure impact outcomes obtained.
Methods: Pregnant mice underwent fetal surgery at embryonic days 15.5, 16.5 (E15.5, E16.5, scarless) and 18.5 (e18.5, fibrotic). Two surgical protocols were used: traditional method involved purse-string sutures, microsurgical scissors, amniotic fluid supplementation, and suture closure (Traditional); and our modified method omitting purse-string sutures, replacing scissors with needle puncture for uterine and fetal incisions, eliminating amniotic fluid supplementation, and employing skin staples for abdominal closure (Modified).
Results: The modified protocol significantly increased the likelihood of successful pregnancy, reduced operative time, decreased abortion rates, and enabled earlier modeling compared to the traditional method. At 48 h, 7 days, and 9 days post-surgery, E15.5 wounds healed scarlessly, displaying regenerated hair follicles and organized collagen. Conversely, E18.5 wounds formed typical fibrotic scars, characterized by dense, disorganized collagen without hair follicles.
Conclusion: The optimized surgical protocol presented here provides a simplified, reliable fetal mouse model with improved pregnancy success, reduced fetal loss, earlier implementation, and consistent phenotypic outcomes. This refined model enhances experimental efficiency, reproducibility, and animal welfare, having a major impact on mechanistic studies and therapeutic exploration for scarless skin regeneration.
期刊介绍：
iological Procedures Online publishes articles that improve access to techniques and methods in the medical and biological sciences.
We are also interested in short but important research discoveries, such as new animal disease models.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Reports of new research techniques and applications of existing techniques
Technical analyses of research techniques and published reports
Validity analyses of research methods and approaches to judging the validity of research reports
Application of common research methods
Reviews of existing techniques
Novel/important product information
Biological Procedures Online places emphasis on multidisciplinary approaches that integrate methodologies from medicine, biology, chemistry, imaging, engineering, bioinformatics, computer science, and systems analysis.
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