Recent advances in dermal wound healing: biomedical device approaches.

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.