Breakthrough treatments for accelerated wound healing

Abstract

Skin injuries across the body continue to disrupt everyday life for millions of patients and result in prolonged hospital stays, infection, and death. Advances in wound healing devices have improved clinical practice but have mainly focused on treating macroscale healing versus underlying microscale pathophysiology. Consensus is lacking on optimal treatment strategies using a spectrum of wound healing products, which has motivated the design of new therapies. We summarize advances in the development of novel drug, biologic products, and biomaterial therapies for wound healing for marketed therapies and those in clinical trials. We also share perspectives for successful and accelerated translation of novel integrated therapies for wound healing.

Fig. 1.. Summary of wound healing types and treatments.

Following an injury stimulus, acute wounds treated either heal or persist to chronic wounds. Depending on the clinical presentation, several different treatments are provided. NPWT, negative pressure wound therapy.

Fig. 2.. The wound treatment pipeline.

Recent clinical trials for wound management, anti-infective, biologics, wound closure, moisture balance, NPWT, and pressure relief among the etiologies of surgical/trauma, ulcer, and burns. Numbers indicate the number of interventional clinical trials since 2015 recruiting, not yet recruiting, actively recruiting, completed, or enrolling by invitation.