Chapter 11 - Curcumin-based strategies in wound healing and skin tissue regeneration

Abstract

Wound healing is a highly specialized and intricate mechanism of substituting the damaged/injured body tissues with the newer healthy tissues. Chronic wounds, particularly burn wounds, present serious challenges to normal healing mechanism and require specialized biomedical intensive care in order to minimize morbidity and mortality. Although, several conventional wound dressings are being used for promoting wound healing; however, complexity of pathophysiology of wounds, particularly the chronic wounds, demands development of competitive therapies. Curcumin (CUR) and its analogs are naturally originated moieties, which have a long history of being used traditionally for treatment of various diseases including the wound healing; however, certain limitations (i.e., poor aqueous solubility, photo-degradation, low absorption and bioavailability, short plasma half-life, etc.) associated with this potent bioactive molecule restrict their further development into the clinical products. To overcome these limitations, nanotechnology-aided strategies have been adapted by compositing the various types of CUR-based nanoformulations. These emerging strategies have also shown exceptional improvement in wound healing and tissue regeneration efficacy of CUR. In this chapter, we have overviewed wound healing process, effect of CUR on different stages of wound healing of acute or chronic wounds, limitations associated with the use of CUR, and therapeutic superiority of various types of CUR-based nanoformulations for treatment of acute-to-chronic wounds with special focus on improving therapeutic outcomes, minimizing side effects, and improving the patient compliance and quality of life.