THE ROLE OF GROWTH-FACTORS IN WOUND-HEALING

Growth factors have many activities that make them attractive agents f or stimulating tissue repair, Growth factors attract cells into the wo und, stimulate their proliferation, and have profound influence on ext racellular matrix deposition, Since developing the ability to mass-pro duce these cytokines by recombinant techniques, hundreds of studies ha ve demonstrated that growth factors can augment all aspects of tissue repair in normal and impaired healing models, After demonstrating that growth factors augment healing, investigators have started to detect and measure growth factors in wounds and have found that wounding init iates the expression of various growth factors, Impaired healing has a lso been linked to altered growth factor production, These findings ha ve prompted great interest in the use of growth factors to augment cli nical healing, Preliminary clinical trials have not produced the resul ts expected, Growth factor treatment has occasionally led to statistic ally significant improvements in tissue repair, but whether the result s are clinically significant can be debated, It appears that to be cos t effective, clinical trials must focus on targeting growth factors fo r specific types of impaired healing, Although growth factors have not been the panacea that was originally expected, they have the potentia l for making significant clinical improvements when targeted for speci fic problem wounds.