Background: Healing of burns is a complex process and very few effective treatments exist to facilitate the burn\nrecovery process. Human acidic fibroblast growth factor 1 (FGF-1) plays an important role in a variety of biological\nprocesses, including angiogenesis, and tissue repair. Salvia miltiorrhiza is widely used in traditional Chinese medicine\nas an herb for the treatment of various diseases, including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and\ntraumatic injuries. We present that expression of FGF-1 in S. miltiorrhiza significantly accelerates the healing of burn\nwounds.\nResults: The human fgf-1 gene was fused with a barley ?-amylase signal peptide DNA sequence and driven by a\n35S promoter for constitutive expression in transgenic S. miltiorrhiza plants. The highest yield of recombinant FGF-1\nobtained from leaves of transgenic S. miltiorrhiza lines was 272 ng/fresh weight. Aqueous extracts from transgenic\nS. miltiorrhiza exhibited FGF-1 activity approximately 19.2-fold greater than that of the standard FGF-1. Compared to\nthe standard FGF-1 or the extracts obtained from non-transgenic plants, it stimulated proliferation of Balb/c 3 T3\nmouse fibroblast cells assessed with the standard MTT assay and promoted angiogenesis in the chicken embryo\nchorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay. Topical application of the extract significantly accelerated the burn wound\nhealing process.\nConclusions: The product appears to retain the biological activity of both FGF-1 as well as the medicinal properties\nof the plant. The extracts from transgenic S. miltiorrhiza combines the therapeutic functions of FGF-1 and the\nmedicinal plant, S. miltiorrhiza. Topical application of the product can reduce the costs associated with extraction,\npurification, and recovery.
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