**13. Conclusions and future perspectives**

Millions of people around the globe are being affected by chronic wounds, with current research showing limited success in producing FDA-approved efficacious therapeutic agents. This may be attributed to the fact that chronic wound pathology is highly complex as is the tissue repair process. Hence, researchers are in dire need to develop alternative therapeutic approaches for the management of nonhealing wounds that would be viable and efficient as per the FDA norms. The factors that are known to impede the development of therapeutics for chronic wounds include variability of patients and comorbidities, limited understanding of patient pathophysiology, complexity and costs associated with clinical trials, and the general lack of awareness in the public.

Despite a multitude of previously existing materials, healing in chronic conditions is still compromised. Hence, the future wound repair materials should possess a plethora of functions and properties such as antimicrobial, biomimetic, bioresponsive, and hemostasis to provide a suitable microenvironment for wound repair. Therefore, developing an appropriate combinational therapy that targets dysfunctional cellular processes remains the major challenge. Future advances in the understanding of the complex wound healing process will surely aid in this front. The emergence of multifunctional nanotechnologies, in the wound healing arena, showcases the high expectations toward this field. However, gaining in-depth information about their
