147 Involvement of the Human Antimicrobial Peptide LL-37 in Wound Repair

Antimicrobial peptides are major components of the innate defense system that present microbicidal activity against gram positive and negative bacteria, yeast, and some enveloped viruses. The human cathelicidin LL-37 is expressed in skin upon wounding and, in addition to its role in antimicrobial defense, it has also been previously demonstrated that this peptide might be involved in reepithelization. We have generated an adenoviral vector containing the complete sequence of LL-37 along with an Ires-GFP expression cassette. The efficacy of this vector was probed by testing the conditioned medium from adenoviral transduced keratinocytes in preventing bacterial growth. We have studied the in vitro effects of LL-37 on HK migration and proliferation. In addition, we have efficiently transduced human skin grafts (in immunodeficient mice) using an in vivo gene transfer approach and we are currently testing the involvement of this peptide in wound repair.