Wound therapy: growth factors as agents to promote healing.

The development of recombinant growth factors for the treatment of nonhealing or badly healing wounds has reached the clinical-trial phase. These first studies in humans are yielding valuable information on the physiological role of growth factors in different types of wounds, their mode of action and their stability under in vivo conditions. Data from these early trials in humans can be interpreted in the light of the continuing scientific progress being made in wound-healing research, and thus lead to an improvement in the design of future studies. Growth-factor-based therapeutics are expected to enter the marketplace in the middle of this decade, and to become a highly profitable sector of the health-care industry by the turn of the century.