Application and recent progress of MXene-based bioactive materials in wound management

Abstract

Wound management is one of the major challenges in the biomedical field, where wound ulceration and bacterial infections cause systemic inflammatory reactions or scarring in patients, seriously affecting the quality of life and causing great economic pressure. Smart bioactive materials offer new therapeutic strategies for wound management and monitoring, providing a tailored option for wound repair. MXene, as a 2D functional and tunable material, exhibits unique advantages and enormous potential in promoting cell growth, angiogenesis, recruiting immune cells, avoiding infections, and biological signal transmission. This review details the benefits of MXene-based materials in the field of tissue repair and addresses the key challenges faced by different wounds, reflecting excellent bioactivity and organismal suitability. Notably, MXene can function as a smart surrogate device, enabling precise assessments for wound monitoring and care. This development signifies a paradigm shift towards a novel era of non-invasive monitoring of the healing cycle. Nevertheless, strategies for regenerative tissue engineering employing MXene-based materials encounter certain challenges and difficulties, which include ensuring long-term bioactive function, developing novel material types, and meeting individual clinical needs. Finally, the future research directions and technological developments of MXene-based materials in wound management were briefly discussed.