Molecular Analysis of the Environments of Healing and Chronic Wounds: Cytokines, Proteases and Growth Factors

Molecular Regulation of Wound Healing Wound healing in the skin is a complex biological process involving inflammation, chemotaxis of cells, mitosis of epidermal, dermal and vascular cells, neovascularisation, synthesis of extracellular matrix proteins and remodelling of scar tissue. Growth factors, cytokines, proteases and hormones have been shown to regulate most aspects of these processes in vitro, and this has led to the hypothesis that these different classes of molecules also regulate important phases of wound healing in vivo 1, 2. The im-portant implication of this hypothesis is that the impairment or imbalance of growth factors, cytokines, proteases or hormones in wounds directly promotes the establishment and maintenance of chronic wounds 3, 4. If these two concepts are correct, then therapies which establish in chronic wounds an environment that permits these molecules to function normally should lead to the healing of chronic wounds.