Cathelicidin – what’s new in the treatment of chronic wounds?

Chronic wound treatment is a big clinical, logistic, and economic challenge. Therefore, the search for new solutions to improve treatment effectiveness is crucial. Optimal conditions for wound healing may be achieved by a causative approach and proper local treatment. However, sometimes even the standard of care procedures and the use of advanced modern dressings cannot guarantee success. This may be due to the presence of a microbial biofilm that sustains chronic inflammation of the wound bed. The main difficulties in biofilm eradication result not only from the fact that bacteria in that form are more resistant to the majority of antibiotics, but also because they are protected from contact with immunocompetent cells. Fortunately, our defence system exploits a curious component of innate immunity: small antimicrobial peptides. The uniqueness of these peptides is due to the fact that, apart from their main antimicrobial action, some of them may also reveal numerous other beneficial properties, which appear to be useful in chronic wound treatment. The aim of this work is to present to the readers one of these unique peptides: cathelicidin.