Distal limb wounds are a common but challenging injury in horses because of frequent complications in wound closure and potential infections from their proximity to the ground. As many equine distal limb wounds are characterized by a loss of large amounts of tissue, thus limiting their ability to be sutured closed to heal by primary intention, they must instead heal by secondary intention. With secondary intention healing, wounds must heal from the bottom up through granulation, contraction, and epithelialization. This process can be slow and result in scarring and in some extreme cases may even eventually require humane euthanasia for the patient. In this issue of ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, Sparks and co-workers characterize distal limb wound healing in an equine model in response to treatment with a biomimetic hydrogel.(1) The hydrogel, previously reported by the Radisic group, is composed of an angiopoietin-1-derived peptide-modified chitosan mixed with collagen.(2) The hydrogel formulation was shown to facilitate keratinocyte migration and promote diabetic wound repair in mice. Application of this hydrogel in the equine distal limb wound healing model similarly improved wound outcome. There are several noteworthy elements to this work. First, the authors characterize the effect of wound location in the equine distal limb on healing and observe differences in medial versus lateral and proximal versus distal wounds. For example, more granulation tissue was observed in proximal wounds compared to distal wounds. Second, the authors apply a novel tensile testing method to investigate the biomechanical properties of the healing equine skin. Finally, the authors demonstrate that the peptide-hydrogel significantly improves wound healing in the equine model: 62.5% of wounds treated with the peptide-hydrogel healed by 42 days in comparison to <40% of control wounds and healed with more functional tissue compliance compared to control wounds. This significant study highlights the potential of the peptide hydrogel to improve wound healing in horses. In addition, similarities in scarring between equine and human wounds suggest that the peptide hydrogel might facilitate wound healing with minimal scarring in humans as well. Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS. This article references 2 other publications. This article has not yet been cited by other publications. This article references 2 other publications.

中文翻译：

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用仿生水凝胶控制马模型中的伤口愈合反应

肢体远端伤口是马匹常见但具有挑战性的伤害，因为伤口闭合时常发生并发症，并且由于接近地面而可能感染。由于许多马的远端肢体伤口的特点是损失大量组织，从而限制了其缝合的能力，无法通过主要目的对其进行愈合，因此，它们必须改为通过辅助目的进行愈合。对于次要目的，伤口必须通过肉芽形成，收缩和上皮形成从下至上愈合。这个过程可能很慢并且会导致疤痕形成，在某些极端情况下甚至可能最终需要为患者实施人道安乐死。在本期《ACS生物材料科学与工程》中，Sparks和他的同事们通过仿生水凝胶对马模型中远端肢体伤口愈合进行了表征。（1）Radisic小组先前报道的水凝胶是由血管生成素1衍生的肽修饰的壳聚糖组成的。 （2）该水凝胶制剂可促进角质形成细胞迁移并促进小鼠糖尿病伤口修复。这种水凝胶在马远端肢体伤口愈合模型中的应用类似地改善了伤口结局。这项工作有几个值得注意的元素。首先，作者表征了马远端肢体伤口位置对愈合的影响，并观察了内侧，外侧和近端与远端伤口的差异。例如，与远侧伤口相比，在近侧伤口中观察到更多的肉芽组织。第二，作者应用一种新颖的拉伸测试方法来研究马的愈合皮肤的生物力学性能。最后，作者证明了肽-水凝胶可显着改善马模型中的伤口愈合：相比之下，使用肽-水凝胶治疗的伤口中有62.5％的伤口愈合了42天，而对照伤口的<40％则愈合了，而功能性组织顺应性更高控制伤口。这项重要的研究突显了肽水凝胶改善马伤口愈合的潜力。另外，马和人伤口之间的瘢痕形成的相似性表明，肽水凝胶也可以促进伤口愈合，而人的瘢痕形成也最小。本社论中表达的观点只是作者的观点，不一定是ACS的观点。本文引用了其他2个出版物。本文尚未被其他出版物引用。本文引用了其他2个出版物。