Advances in Antioxidant Nanofibers for Skin Tissue Engineering: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract Wound healing is a highly organized process involving multiple cell types and mediators interacting in a highly ordered sequence. During the inflammation phase, inflammatory cells produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) to protect the wound from the invading microbes. However, excessive ROS present at the wound site causes oxidative stress, damaging cells like fibroblasts, thereby impairing the healing process. In complex wound environment such as diabetic wounds, the persistent inflammatory stimuli caused by oxidative stress make wound treatment challenging. Antioxidant‐based nanofibrous wound dressings are promising interventions that can be used to restore the redox balance by modulating the ROS levels while also promoting tissue regeneration due to their extracellular matrix (ECM)‐mimicking nature. This review provides a complete overview of the wound healing process and its impairment in the presence of excessive ROS. It also highlights recent advancements in the design and development of nanofibers loaded with natural and synthetic antioxidants and their applications in treating diabetic and infected wounds. Furthermore, this review explains how the next‐generation smart nanofibrous wound dressings can be utilized to develop personalized wound dressings. Taken together, this research paper aims to become a reference for future research regarding the preparation of personalized and innovative antioxidant wound dressings.