Cell-Based Therapies for Chronic Wounds Tested in Clinical Studies: Review

Transplantation of the keratinocytes, fibroblasts, bone marrow, and adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells may improve chronic wound healing by delivery of different cytokines, chemokines, and growth factors, which play an essential role in wound healing. The purposes of this review were to check which cell lines are potentially beneficial in enhancement of wound healing and to describe the safety and efficacy of cell therapies in the clinical treatment of chronic wounds, as well as to summarize the pertinent literature and research progress in this field.

PubMed search engine and ClinicalTrials.gov were used to analyze the available data on cell therapies applied in treatment of chronic wound. The analysis included 51 articles, assessing the use of keratinocytes (10), fibroblasts (7), keratinocytes and fibroblasts (10), bone marrow-derived cells (20), and adipose tissue cells (4). Studies on the cell-based products that are currently available on the market (Dermagraft, EpiDex, Apligraf, and HP802-247) were also included, with majority of reports found on fibroblasts and keratinocytes studies.

Cell-based therapies have a great potential to improve wound healing without major surgical procedures and donor-site morbidity. There is, however, a lack of guidelines on how the age of the patients, the general health conditions, and the coexistence of different diseases may affect the success of these therapies. Further studies are needed to determine the fate of transplanted cells and the number of cells required to obtain optimal effects and outcomes.

Despite many promising clinical trials on application of various stem cell-based therapies for treatment of chronic wounds, there is still a need for multicenter comparative studies assessing the dose response and the cell source response on the efficacy of chronic wound healing.