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2013
Book Article
Titel
Macrophage-targeted therapy of chronic wounds
Abstract
The formation of chronic wounds is associated with dysregulated inflammation - a multicausal pathophysiological event - resulting in difficult and inefficient treatment. Due to the age-associated nature of most of these disorders and the demographic transition towards an overall older population, efficient therapeutic intervention strategies will need to be developed in the near future. Over the past decades, elimination of macrophages using immunotoxins (IT) has proven to be a promising way of resolving inflammation in animal models. More recent data have shown that especially the M1-polarized population of activated macrophages is critically involved in the chronic phase of wound healing. Here, we present existing animal models for wound healing and recapitulate the latest progress in the development of IT. These have advanced from full-length antibodies, chemically coupled to bacterial toxins, into single chain variants of antibodies, genetically fused with fully hum an enzymes. These improvements have increased the range of possible target diseases, which now include chronic wound healing. At present there are no therapeutic strategies focusing on macrophages to treat chronic wounds. In this review, we focus on the role of different polarized macrophages and the potential of IT to intervene in the process of chronic inflammation.