Disclosure: This work was supported by Cook Biotech Incorporated. Dr. Allam is a paid consultant for Healthpoint, Ltd.

The native dermis is normally able to direct wound healing following damage but in chronic wounds, the dermal extracellular matrix (ECM) and cells within it are diseased and unable to provide the correct signals needed to stimulate and coordinate healing.^1,2 In deep, chronic diabetic foot ulcers, pressure ulcers, or venous leg ulcers, the dermal ECM may be completely absent and wounds may not efficiently epithelialize because

I welcome you to this special edition of WOUNDS focusing on the extracellular matrix (ECM). The topic of ECMs and their role in tissue and wound repair has become increasingly important as clinicians become more familiar with the use of modalities designed for difficult-to-heal wounds. The purpose of this particular edition is to introduce 3 more commonly used ECMs by allowing the scientists involved in their development and production to provide a scientific basis for their role in tissue repair and include any available clinical correlations.
Extracellular matrices are desi

Chronic wounds with a variety of etiologies represent a longstanding and major healthcare problem. Among these, diabetic ulcers are a growing and difficult medical challenge with more than 800,000 annual diagnoses in the United States alone.¹ Lack of an ideal treatment modality has wide ranging implications including quality of life (amputations to death) and economic issues. A variety of different approaches have been attempted at addressing medical solutions for chronic wounds, such as generic dressings, peptides, growth factors, and live cellular grafts that report mixed resul

The goal of regenerative medicine is to recapitulate in adult wounded tissue the intrinsic regenerative processes that are involved in normal adult tissue maintenance. Recent advances allow adult wounds to heal in a similar fashion to the regenerative healing that is also present during fetal development. Research suggests that tissue loss or injury that occurs during early fetal development can be corrected by a regenerative mechanism since fetal wound healing appears to occur without scar formation.¹ However, later in the gestational development there is a transition from the r