Porcine Wound Models: The Gold Standard for Translational Research in Cutaneous Healing

Porcine wound models are central to translational cutaneous repair research because porcine skin reproduces many structural and healing features of human skin and supports clinically relevant wound sizes, sampling strategies and device testing. This review summarises the historical development and current use of major porcine wound platforms including incisional, partial-thickness, full-thickness, infected, chronic-like, diabetic, ischaemic, burn, pressure ulcer, hypertrophic scar and radiation models, with emphasis on methodological rigour, translational strengths and study-specific limitations. We further highlight how spatially resolved molecular profiling, longitudinal imaging and integrated transcriptomic datasets are expanding mechanistic interrogation of porcine wounds and may support development of AI-enabled analytic frameworks when linked to well-annotated healing outcomes. Emerging humanised and genetically engineered swine provide additional opportunities to model human-specific immune or comorbidity contexts, although broader validation remains necessary. Key challenges remain the difficulty of sustaining chronicity in otherwise healthy animals, inter-study variability in wound generation and reporting and the need to align preclinical endpoints with clinically meaningful outcomes. Overall, porcine models remain the most clinically relevant large-animal platforms for bridging mechanistic wound-healing studies and late-stage preclinical therapeutic evaluation.