Principles of Wound Healing, with Special Reference to GI Ulceration
Last Friday (Nov. 26, 2021), the founding dean of the AUHS-SOM was an invited speaker at the 52nd Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Wound Healing, with a presentation on “Principles of Wound Healing, with Special Reference to GI Ulceration.”
Because of COVID-19, this year’s conference was held via Zoom. Since gastrointestinal ulcers (GI) are essentially internal wounds, Dr. Szabo was invited due to his international reputation as a well-established investigator of GI ulceration. In his 50-minute-long lecture, he reviewed the main cellular and molecular mechanisms of wound healing and then focused on his more than 30 years of experience with GI ulcer research. Specifically, his laboratory was the first to describe the potent ulcer-healing effects of angiogenic growth factors, like basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in animal models of gastric and duodenal ulcers, as well as ulcerative colitis. The conference was attended by some 200 experts, mostly from Japan.
For those who are not familiar with mechanisms of wound healing, angiogenesis refers to growing new blood vessels. For further information on this topic, please, see:
- DOI: 10.2174/138161211796197034
- And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_fibroblast_growth_factor
- Finally, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53238/
