Skin
cells can get excited by the fragrance from sandal wood and kick
start wound healing; the
researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany have
discovered.
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| English: Glass vial containing Sandalwood (Santalum album) Essential Oil (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Not only nose is the
site for Olfactory Receptors (OR) as popularly known, but also these
receptors are housed in many other cells; spermatozoa, melanocytes
and dendritic cells etc..
They have found
several ORs in the skin cells called keratinocytes viz. OR6M1,
OR11A1, OR6V1, OR5V1 and
OR2AT4 using microarray and RT-PCR
analyses.
Out of the host of
olfactory receptors, OR2AT4 is of special interest for wound healing
because activated OR2AT4 triggers the proliferation and
migration of
keratinocytes, which are the essential steps for re-epithelialization of the
wounds.
Possibly
this happens via calcium-dependant signalling pathway in primary
keratinocytes induced by Sandalore and Brahmanol found in sandal
wood oil.
Further down stream, the signaling cascade possibly
activates the cAMP/PKA pathway or multiple pathways including EGFR to
the phosphorylation of the MAP kinases Erk1/2 and p38, resulting the
increased
proliferation and migration of cells.
All the synthetic
sandalwood molecules may not have the desired molecules to have the
effect.
