Possible Drug Repurposing and Accelerated Wound Healing

Healing of a wound is a multifaceted process that involves several factors to be considered for proper completion. Improper healing of wounds is a widespread phenomenon that affects millions of people across the world constantly. Treatment of acute or chronic diabetic wounds has been one of the major clinical challenges past several years as diabetic patients have much more deprived wound healing which often leads to surgery of the injured site or amputation of the wounded part is usually done in severe cases.

Angiogenesis plays a major role in the process of neovascularization, so angiogenesis is a potential target for wound healing as the newer blood vessels formed over the injured surface are important to provide nutrients, immune cells, and oxygen for the healing of wounds. Several classes of drugs act on different growth factors for treating certain disorders and these drugs can be repurposed for the healing of different types of wounds. A vast literature survey was carried out to find potential drugs that can be repurposed for the healing of wounds.

Repurposing of drugs is economical compared to that of traditional treatment methods and it can be delivered to a wider range of people in need. These drugs might have the potential to initiate the neovascularization development through angiogenesis which aids the accelerated wound healing process.

Wound healing is a complex multistep process that involves several cellular infiltrations and their subsequent physiological actions. Angiogenesis is the process of new blood vessel formation and it is helpful in wound healing as the newer blood vessels formed at the injured site are important to provide nutrients, immune cells, and oxygen for the healing of wounds. Growth factors play a major role in initiating the angiogenesis process and several drugs act on these specific growth factors directly or indirectly which can be repurposed to activate angiogenesis and accelerate the healing of different types of wounds (burns, diabetic ulcers, and trauma wounds).

These classes of drugs will be screened for their binding affinity with the target growth factors using the in-silico docking software (PyRx and Autodock Vina). The drug classes will be further suspected to in vitro studies (Ex., scratch assay, and trans-well migration assay) and followed by in vivo wound healing studies on animals.

Artificial intelligence technology helps with drug relocation by cutting expenses and time even further. New computational techniques for identifying connections between many kinds of biological entities, including genes, proteins, and medications, can be advantageous for drug repurposing. So, this will benefit the research in finding, repurposing, and developing new therapeutic ways for wound care medications that are already on the market. It will also be used to keep track of the wound healing progress across a community.