1457 Kampo traditional ointments for wound healing

The traditional Japanese herbal medicine, named Kampo, offers treatments for a wide range of therapeutic indications including dermatological ones. Among Kampo formulas, three topical preparations are used for skin wound healing: Shiunko, Chuoko and Shinsen taitsuko. All have in common sesame oil and beeswax in which crude drugs are extracted. Among the herbs used are representatives of the botanical genera Angelica, Lithospermum, Curcuma, Phellodendron, Paeonia, Rheum, Rehmannia, Scrophularia and Cinnamomum. While the Kampo drinkable formulas are widely standardized, it is not the case yet for topical formulas. Therefore, for these preparations a great chemical and therapeutic variability can be observed depending on the origins and species of the plants used, and on the treatments and extraction methods applied to the crude drugs. Better understanding of this diversity and the possible rationalization of these topical treatments is consequently of great interest. The study of topical Kampo ointments is complex because of their lipophilic aspect which makes both metabolomic and biological studies challenging. However, suitable experimental protocols allow the assessment of the metabolites' diversity and of the biological action of Kampo topicals. The preferred biological model to study wound healing under these conditions is the scratch test which can be performed on several cell types such as keratinocytes. The various oily Kampo extracts tested suggest that these preparations are effective on wound healing due to their lipophilic nature and metabolites that are active on wound healing, such as curcumin, shikonin, imperatonin, byakangelicin or rhein. If the chemical composition of Kampo oily extracts has not yet been described to our knowledge, there is good reason to believe that these molecules may be in the Kampo ointments and play positive role for wound healing.