Differences between fibroblasts cultured from oral mucosa and normal skin: implication to wound healing

It is generally agreed that oral mucosa heals faster with less scar than skin does, and hypertrophic scar or keloid is very rare in the oral cavity. Fibroblasts are thought to play an important role in wound healing and scar formation, whose control is mediated by growth factors. We have studied whether there are any differences in the cellular behavior of fibroblasts between oral mucosa and skin, and in their response to growth factors. Oral mucosal fibroblasts proliferated slightly more than dermal fibroblasts on average. Dermal fibroblasts in collagen gel possessed greater contraction potency than oral mucosa fibroblasts, irrespective of the presence of growth factors; however, oral mucosa fibroblasts showed an earlier collagen gel contraction with or without TGF-beta1. There were no differences in basal collagen synthetic rate between dermal and oral mucosal fibroblasts, while the latter synthesized more collagen than dermal fibroblasts when they were stimulated with TGF-beta1. Our study showed that oral mucosal fibroblasts and dermal fibroblasts had selective differences in cellular behavior and in their responses to growth factors, which seems to contribute to the differences in wound healing.