The natural medications for wound healing - Curcumin, Aloe-Vera and Ginger - do not induce a significant effect on the migration kinematics of cultured fibroblasts

Curcumin, Aloe-vera and Ginger are popular natural medications (NMs) for treating wounds, however, the mechanisms by which these NMs apparently accelerate wound healing remain largely unknown. From a biomechanical perspective, it is specifically unclear whether fibroblast motility improves in the presence of any of these NMs. Here we use our recently developed quantitative high-precision automated assay for cell migration (Topman et al., 2012b) which is based on image processing of time lapse micrographs to determine whether kinematic parameters e.g. the maximum and average migration rates of en mass fibroblast colonies are influenced by treating the cells with the above NMs. We found no evidence that Curcumin, Aloe-vera and Ginger directly influence the en mass fibroblast migration kinematics in vitro post infliction of localized mechanical damage to the cultures. However, due to the complexity of a wound healing process in vivo, these NMs may still influence the healing through other pathways.