Identification of IGF2 promotes skin wound healing by co-expression analysis

Oral mucosa is an ideal model for studying scarless wound healing. Researchers have shown that the key factors which promote scarless wound healing already exist in basal state of oral mucosa. Thus, to identify the other potential factors in basal state of oral mucosa will benefit to skin wound healing. In this study, we identified eight gene modules enriched in wound healing stages of human skin and oral mucosa through co-expression analysis, among which the module M8 was only module enriched in basal state of oral mucosa, indicating that the genes in module M8 may have key factors mediating scarless wound healing. Through bioinformatic analysis of genes in module M8, we found IGF2 may be the key factor mediating scarless wound healing of oral mucosa. Then, we purified IGF2 protein by prokaryotic expression, and we found that IGF2 could promote the proliferation and migration of HaCaT cells. Moreover, IGF2 promoted wound re-epithelialization and accelerated wound healing in a full-thickness skin wound model. Our findings identified IGF2 as a factor to promote skin wound healing which provide a potential target for wound healing therapy in clinic.