Emerging drugs for the treatment of wound healing

Abstract

Introduction: Wound healing can be characterized as underhealing, as in the setting of chronic wounds, or overhealing, occurring with hypertrophic scar formation after burn injury. Topical therapies targeting specific biochemical and molecular pathways represent a promising avenue for improving and, in some cases normalizing, the healing process.

Areas covered: A brief overview of both normal and pathological wound healing has been provided, along with a review of the current clinical guidelines and treatment modalities for chronic wounds, burn wounds and scar formation. Next, the major avenues for wound healing drugs, along with drugs currently in development, are discussed. Finally, potential challenges to further drug development, and future research directions are discussed.

Expert opinion: The large body of research concerning wound healing pathophysiology has provided multiple targets for topical therapies. Growth factor therapies with the ability to be targeted for localized release in the wound microenvironment are most promising, particularly when they modulate processes in the proliferative phase of wound healing.

Keywords:

• adjuvant
• burns
• chronic wounds
• developing drugs
• scarring
• wound healing

Acknowledgment

EA Brett and A Luan contributed equally to this work.

Declaration of interest

MT Longaker was supported by NIH grants U01 HL099776, R01 DE021683-01, RC2 DE020771, the Oak Foundation and Hagey Laboratory for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine. HP Lorenz was supported by NIH grant GM087609, a Gift from Ingrid Lai and Bill Shu in honor of Anthony Shu and the Hagey Laboratory for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine and Children’s Surgical Research Program. DC Wan was supported by NIH grant 1K08DE24269, the ACS Franklin H Martin Faculty research Fellowship, the Hagey Laboratory for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine and the Stanford University Child Health Research Institute Faculty Scholar award. 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.

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