Gene therapy in cutaneous wound healing

Medical treatment of complicated acute and chronic wounds represents a persistent and increasing medical and economic problem in our health-care system. In this review, we discuss the potentials and limitations of current and future gene therapy for the treatment of complicated, acute and chronic wounds. Chronic non-healing wounds result in significant morbidity, prolonged hospitalization, lost time from work and enormous health-care expenses. There are constant efforts to improve the therapeutic modalities to local treatment of wounds. One of them is gene-therapy where the delivery of peptides directly into the wound provides a relatively new and exciting possibility. The two groups of peptides of particular interest are growth-factors and anti-microbial peptides. Gene delivery of these peptides provides not only the possibility of more targeted local delivery but also larger concentrations. Many new techniques for gene delivery to wounds have been developed in recent years. The combination of mechanical and viral or chemical vectors appear to have the greatest yield. This review provides an update on gene delivery to cutaneous wounds.