Wesley L. Hicks, Jr., D.D.S., M.D. [http://www.roswellpark.org/document_3544_634.html]

Department of Head and Neck Surgery
ENT and Head and Neck Surgery
Roswell Park Cancer Institute
Elm & Carlton Street
Buffalo, NY  14263
Tel: (716) 845-3158

Currently, there is an incomplete understanding of the cellular dynamics associated with reepithelialization after injury, a necessary and critical component to organ integrity. The Hicks group has hypothesized that reepithelialization can be enhanced by selectively releasing cytokines and growth factors from bioengineered constructs. They have been engaged in studies to identify those specific growth factors and cytokines important to enhancing cellular migration and proliferation after injury. To initiate these studies, the Hicks group has developed considerable expertise in primary cell culture models.

In addition this laboratory has undertaken to study the role that the basement membrane plays in the attenuation of injury and the enhancement of reepithelialization. Though their studies are applicable to multiple organ systems, they have chosen respiratory epithelium as a model system because of its functional and physiologic complexity.

Preliminary data from this group indicate that the respiratory epithelial cells initiate an autocrine intra-epithelial repair process in response to injury by expressing proteins that have known mitogenic and motogenic activity. They are presently studying the signaling cascade that initiates the expression of these factors and determining their individual and combined effects on the rate of migration/proliferation. To enhance reepithelialization, cells must first adhere to the surface over which they will then migrate. The integrins are prominent class of heterodimeric cell surface receptors that mediate cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions. Given this, the Hicks group has undertaken the analysis of integrin expression after injury.