MXene-Enabled Biomaterials for Wound Healing: Recent Advances, Mechanistic Insights, and Translational Prospects

The skin is the body’s largest organ and its primary barrier against chemical, radiological, and microbial challenges. When wound healing is impaired or delayed, patients face significant clinical risks, including severe and potentially life-threatening complications. To address these challenges, a wide range of advanced dressing technologies such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), hydrogels, fibers, nanoparticles, and enzyme-based systems has been developed to support tissue repair and prevent infection. Many of these dressings incorporate bioactive components, including antibiotics, nanoparticles, and growth factors, to enhance therapeutic efficacy. Among emerging strategies, bioactive inorganic nanoparticles have drawn increasing attention for their ability to reinforce the regenerative functions of wound dressings. MXene-based nanoparticles show strong potential owing to their electrical conductivity, hydrophilicity, antibacterial activity, and biocompatibility. These features make MXenes promising building blocks for next-generation wound care materials. This review summarizes recent advances in integrating MXenes into MOFs, hydrogels, fibers, nanoparticle systems, and enzyme-based platforms. It also discusses the key factors that shape their performance, outlines strategies to improve their therapeutic effectiveness, and identifies priority research directions for accelerating the development and clinical translation of MXene-enabled biomaterials for wound healing.