Sprayable Bioactive Dressings for Skin Wounds: Recent Developments and Future Prospects

Abstract

The skin, as the body's main protection barrier from the environment, has an intrinsic self-repairable nature. However, proper wound healing only occurs under appropriate conditions. Skin wounds represent an economic burden on healthcare systems worldwide. Recent research has focused on developing new therapies, especially for chronic wounds. Among them, spray-applied therapies have emerged as a promising strategy for allowing deeper penetration of the products, better conformability, easiness of application, lower discomfort for the patient, and lower risk of contamination during application. Specifically, sprayable wound dressings have been getting attention for enabling the treatment of severe cases or hard-to-heal wounds by incorporating different bioactive agents. Organic and inorganic compounds, natural extracts, signaling compounds, and live human cells have been investigated. In this context, this review summarizes the main findings of recently developed spray-applied bioactive wound dressings.