Electroporation Applications in Wound Healing

Controlling the process of wound healing is necessary to prevent abnormal healing processes such as chronic wounds and scarring. In this chapter, we discuss the use of electroporation, and it's various applications treating wounds. Electroporation is an increase of cell membrane permeability in a temporary or permanent way by exposing the cells to a high voltage pulsed electric field. Temporary increase of cell membrane permeability by external pulsed electric fields is known as reversible electroporation and permanent increase in the permeability, which leads to cell death, is known as irreversible electroporation. Both modes of electroporation have been used for the wound healing applications. We start the chapter with the basic explanation of electroporation phenomena. Next, we discuss the use of reversible electroporation in the wound healing for DNA delivery to wounds. We continue with examples of the use of irreversible electroporation for burn wounds disinfection. Next, we show the use of both reversible and irreversible electroporation in scar treatment. We conclude with future direction that could lead this non-thermal, chemical free intervention by pulsed electric fields described for practical clinical applications in wound management.