Impact of plasminogen on an in vitro wound healing model based on a perfusion cell culture system

Vascular reorganization in wound healing is a complex process, which involves coagulation, endothelial cell proliferation and migration, basement membrane regeneration, and fibrinolysis. During this healing process, the hemostatic system and the angiogenic system are intimately interconnected. To elucidate the contribution of plasminogen in the process of wound healing, we have established a perfusion cell culture system. Using this novel cell culture system, we found that addition of plasminogen in the perfusion medium allowed the "scratch-wounded" endothelial cells to recover completely, while mini-plasminogen only affected the migration but not the proliferation of the endothelial cells. In the process of recovery with the addition of plasminogen, significant plasmin activity could only be detected when the growth of the endothelial cells have almost reached confluence. This finding indicates that wound healing is triggered and promoted during the absence of the proteolytic activity of plasmin. In addition, we could not detect any matrix metalloproteinase activity in the perfusion culture medium throughout the whole culture period. However, we did found that the circulating medium collected from the perfusion system at the early phase of the healing process has stimulatory activity on the growth of endothelial cells, but the proliferative activity decreased back to the basal level when the cells reached confluence. Thus, by using the perfusion cell culture system, we found that proliferation of endothelial cells is regulated by plasminogen and the wound healing process is controlled by a temporal interaction between the endothelial cells and plasminogen.