Poster 1024: Accelerated healing of full-thickness cutaneous wound using purified apitoxin from asiatic honey bee (Apis cerana Fabricius)

Background Cutaneous wound healing is a conserved, complex, multi-cellular, multi-molecular process, which is executed and regulated by equally complex signaling networks involving numerous growth factors, cytokines and chemokines. It functions to facilitate barrier restoration following injury-induced loss of skin integrity. Apitoxin, or honey bee venom, has been claimed to be of use in skin wound healing, arthritis, herpes zoster, etc. However, the major allergens in apitoxin such as phospholipase A2 and hyaluronidase, can easily induce life-threatening IgE-mediated allergic reactions in humans. Thus these destructive components should be removed effectively before the apitoxin therapy.