Tissue injury, one of the most common traumatic injuries in daily life, easily leads to secondary wound infections. To promote wound healing and reduce scarring, various kinds of wound dressings, such as gauze, bandages, sponges, patches, and microspheres, have been developed for wound healing. Among them, microsphere-based tissue dressings have attracted increasing attention due to the advantage of easy to fabricate, excellent physicochemical performance and superior drug release ability. In this review, we first introduced the common methods for microspheres preparation, such as emulsification-solvent method, electrospray method, microfluidic technology as well as phase separation methods. Next, we summarized the common biomaterials for the fabrication of the microspheres including natural polymers and synthetic polymers. Then, we presented the application of the various microspheres from different processing methods in wound healing and other applications. Finally, we analyzed the limitations and discussed the future development direction of microspheres in the future.
Keywords: biomaterials; drug release; microspheres; tissue engineering; wound healing.