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engrafted EB mouse skin initially exhibited blisters with separation of the epidermis from the
underlying dermis, akin to the knockout mouse and patients with dystrophic EB. However,
subsequent assessment of the engrafted mice showed that the severity of the skin blistering
became less or ceased, suggesting functional improvement of the EB skin on the GFP-BMT
mouse. To assess the phenotypic improvement, we examined the EB skin histologically at
day-24 after the engraftment. Surprisingly, GFP-positive keratinocytes expressing
skin-specific cytokeratins were clearly evident in the regenerated epidermis of the EB skin.
Even more remarkable was the detection of type VII collagen at the cutaneous basement
membrane zone in the EB mouse skin. Of note, EB mouse skin engrafted onto the
GFP-transgenic mouse with prior wild type BMT did not show any GFP-positive BMDKs.
These data strongly suggest that the functional BMDKs providing type VII collagen in the EB
mouse skin are exclusively derived from bone marrow cells.
At present, there is no effective therapy for patients with EB. Current management
often involves skin grafts, either derived from unaffected skin sites or from cultured
keratinocytes. Our observations in this mouse model may therefore have implications for
interpreting how skin grafts in patients with EB work: rather than simply adding keratinocytes
to the wounds, the benefits might actually be explained by migration of bone marrow cells to
provide robust BMDKs in the grafted skin. A further important consideration of BMT in
patients with EB is immune tolerance following restoration of type VII collagen to the
basement membrane zone. BMT is known to induce central immune tolerance against
molecules expressed in the transplanted marrow-derived cells in the thymus. Since EB
patients may not have immune tolerance against type VII collagen, BMT may not only rescue
epidermal tolerance but also may induce immune tolerance in advance of supplementary
therapies such as protein, cell or gene therapies.
We have proved for the first time that transplanted bone marrow cells can ameliorate
the pathological abnormalities underlying a genetic skin disease. Although clinically-relevant
sources of transplantable bone marrow cells may be limited to either HLA-matched donor
cells or self-marrow cells with prior gene correction, our findings provide novel insight into
BMT as a potential treatment for intractable diseases affecting epithelial tissues such as the
skin.
Very recently, we have found that grafted skin would generate bone marrow-derived
mesenchymal stem cell-recruiting signals, and referred this factor as KOI-KOI signal, since
KOI-KOI means Come here in Japanese. This KOI-KOI signal may be applied as a drug
to recruit mesenchymal stem cells to the damaged tissues, hopefully resulting in accelerating
functional scar-less healing (Figure).