Chronic wounds remain an unresolved medical issue because of major social and therapeutic repercussions that require extensive focus. Recent related theragnostic focuses only on wound management and is not effectively promoting chronic wound healing. The rising number of patients with either under-healing or over-healing wounds highlights the ineffectiveness of current wound-healing treatments, and thus, there is an unmet need to focus on alternative treatments. To cover this gap, extracellular vesicles (EVs), for targeted delivery of therapeutics, are emerging as a potential therapy to treat both acute and persistent wounds. To address these issues, we explore the core biology of EVs, associated pharmacology, comprehension of immunogenic outcomes, and potential for long-term wound treatment with improved effectiveness and their nonacceptable side effects. Additionally, the therapeutic role of EVs in severe wound infections through biogenetic moderation, in combination with biomaterials (functional in nature), as well as drug carriers that can offer opportunities for the development of new treatments for this long-term condition, are also carefully elaborated, with an emphasis on biomaterial-based drug delivery systems. It is observed that exploring difficulties and potential outcomes of clinical translation of EV-based therapeutics for wound management has the potential to be adopted as a future therapy.
Keywords: MT: Special Issue - Exploiting Extracellular Vesicles as Therapeutic Agents; biomaterials; chronic wound; extracellular vesicles; inflammation; nanomaterials; stem cells.
© 2023 The Author(s).