Fetal wounds lack the inflammatory infiltrate characteristic of adult wounds, and the fetal environment is not necessary for scarless healing to occur.
Recent evidence suggests that fibroblasts are the main effector of scarless healing in fetal tissue.
What has not been shown is what profile of growth factors the fibroblast uses to influence wound repair. Design Adult and fetal fibroblasts were grown in culture, and messenger RNA was extracted by standard techniques. Northern hybridization was used to identify messenger RNA transcripts for the aforementioned growth factors. Densitometry was used to compare growth factor messenger RNA expression with that of a ubiquitously expressed control, glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase. The data suggest that fetal and adult fibroblasts express acidic and basic fibroblast growth factor and transforming growth factor 1.