OM-LV20, a novel peptide from odorous frog skin, accelerates wound healing in vitro and in vivo

The healing of chronic wounds remains a considerable challenge in clinical trials and imposes severe financial and physiological burdens on patients. Many works are being tried to find ideal clinical promoting-wound-healing biomaterials. Small bioactive peptides with low cost and easy production, store and transfer become excellent candidates. Here, we identified a novel peptide (named OM-LV20) from skin secretions of odorous frog Odorrana margaretae. The peptide had an amino acid sequence of ‘LVGKLLKGAVGDVCGLLPIC’, contained an intramolecular disulfide bridge at the C-terminus, and was produced by posttranslational processing of a 71-residue prepropeptide. Our results showed that OM-LV20 had no direct microbe-killing effects, hemolytic activity, or acute toxicity, but did exhibit weak antioxidant activity. OM-LV20 promoted wound healing against human keratinocytes (HaCaT) and human skin fibroblasts (HSF) in both time- and dose-dependent manners. In addition, it induced the proliferation of HaCaT but not HSF cells. Of note, OM-LV20 showed strong wound healing-promoting activity in a mice model of full-thickness skin wound. Our research indicates the cellular and animal level wound healing potential of OM-LV20, and thus provides a novel bioactive peptide template for the development of wound healing agents and medicine. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.