Recent advances in dermal wound healing: biomedical device approaches

Abstract

Successful repair of wounds and tissues remains a major healthcare and biomedical challenge in the 21st Century. In particular, chronic wounds often lead to loss of functional ability, increased pain and decreased quality of life, and can be a burden on carers and health-system resources. Advanced healing therapies employing biological dressings, skin substitutes, growth factor-based therapies and synthetic acellular matrices, all of which aim to correct irregular and dysfunctional cellular pathways present in chronic wounds, are becoming more popular. This review focuses on recent advances in biologically inspired devices for wound healing and includes a commentary on the challenges facing the regulatory governance of such products.

Keywords::

• chronic wound
• device
• growth factor
• scaffold
• skin

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Nigel Johnson for helpful discussions regarding regulatory issues.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors would like to give thanks for funding from the Queensland State Government and the NH and MRC. Zee Upton holds shares in Tissue Therapies, a biotechnology start-up company that has been spun out of the Queensland University of Technology to commercialize VitroGro technology, discussed in this review. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.