A Tobacco-Derived Thymosin ?4 Concatemer Promotes Cell Proliferation and Wound Healing in Mice.

ABSTRACT: Thymosin ?4 (T?4) is a peptide that is known to play important roles in protection, regeneration, and remodeling of injured tissues in humans, and that shows great promise in a range of clinical applications. However, current strategies to T?4 are insufficient to meet growing demand and have a number of limitations. In this current study we investigated whether expression of recombinant T?4 in plants, specifically in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) leaves, represents an effective approach. To address this question, a 168?bp T?4 gene optimized for tobacco codon usage bias was constitutively expressed in tobacco as a 4-unit repeat concatemer, fused to a polyhistidine tag. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blot analyses were used to verify 4×T?4 expression in 14 transgenic tobacco lines and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay analysis indicated 4×T?4 protein concentrations as high as 3??g/g of fresh weight in the leaves. We observed that direct administration of tobacco-derived T?4 was more effective than T?4 either obtained commercially or derived from expression in Escherichia coli at promoting splenocyte proliferation in vitro and wound healing in mice through an endothelial migration assay. This study provides new insights into the development of plant-derived therapeutic proteins and their application by direct administration.

SUBMITTER: Janarthini R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4963596 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature