Models of Burn Injury Repair and Their Utility for Cold Atmospheric Plasma Research

Abstract

Burn treatment is a rapidly expanding research area for plasma medicine. Burn wounds have distinct pathologies, associated with poor quality healing and infection, as well as displaying a high degree of crosstalk and cellular interplay. In vitro models are common and high-throughput but create artificial conditions dissimilar to clinical burns. Ex vivo models display higher complexity and a treatment surface representative of a true wound with the potential for infection. In vivo burn models are the most faithful for clinical plasma treatment, though the choice of animal determines the skin characteristics, the burn and the healing quality. This review will discuss various models and their interactions with plasma to guide future model selection for plasma treatment optimisation and trials.