The discovery and development of topical medicines for wound healing

Introduction: Chronic, nonhealing skin wounds claim >3% of the health-care budget in industrialized countries, and the incidence is rising. Currently, two parallel trends influence innovations within the field of wound healing: the need to reduce spread of antibiotic resistance and the emerging use of health economy and value-based models.

Areas covered: This review focuses on the discovery of drug candidates and development of treatments aiming to enhance wound healing in the heterogeneous group of patients with nonhealing wounds.

Expert opinion: Nonhealing wounds are multifaceted and recognized as difficult indications. The majority of products currently in use are medical device dressings, or concepts of negative pressure or hyperbaric oxygen treatment. Global best practice guidelines for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers recommend debridement, redressing, as well as infection control, and are critical to the lack of coherent clinical evidence for many approved products in active wound care. To accelerate wound healing, there is an emerging trend toward biologics, gene therapy, and novel concepts for drug delivery in research and in the pipeline for clinical trials. Scientific delineation of the therapeutic mechanism of action is, in our opinion, vital for clinical trial success and for an increased fraction of medical products in the pharmaceutical pipeline.