Chinese herbal medicine-derived self-assembled bioactive materials: A promising strategy for hemostasis and wound...

Traumatic wounds accompanied by severe hemorrhage and extensive contamination pose numerous problems, including delayed healing and a high infection rate. The efficient wound management relies on dressings that comprehensively provide biocompatible support, control exudate, prevent infection, and actively promote tissue regeneration. Self-assembled Natural Products Bioactive Materials (NPBMs) using Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) encompassing nanoparticles, micelles, and hydrogels, have become the emerging nanoplatforms that integrate the bioactivity of CHM with the physical advantages of nanomaterials, demonstrating unique value in hemostasis and holistic wound repair. This review systematically explores recent advances, first outlining the critical requirements for wound healing, then focuses on the core mechanisms by which CHM-based self-assembled nanostructures achieve rapid hemostasis. In addition, it highlights the multifunctional roles of NPBMs self-assembled hydrogel dressings in promoting wound healing, including maintaining an ideal moist microenvironment, enabling controlled release of antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and pro-angiogenic components, modulating immune responses, facilitating cell migration and proliferation and tissue remodeling, efficiently absorbing exudate, and establishing infection-resistant barriers. Finally, it summarizes current challenges such as standardization, mechanistic depth, and clinical translation, while envisioning future directions including stimuli-responsive systems, multifunctional integration, and precision delivery, aiming to provide a theoretical basis and novel insights for developing high-performance NPBMs self-assembled materials for trauma repair.