ReviewInternational wound journal2026
The In Vitro Wound-Scratch Assay: Applications, Technical Advances, and Limitations in Wound Healing Research.
Review in International wound journal, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The wound-scratch assay is a widely used in vitro model for studying collective cell migration, a fundamental process contributing to wound closure and re-epithelialisation. Owing to its simplicity, low cost, and adaptability, it has become a foundational tool for early-stage wound-healing research and therapeutic screening. The assay involves generating a defined gap in a confluent cell monolayer and monitoring gap closure over time as a surrogate readout of repair. This narrative review examined 199 published studies, identifying 73 relevant to wound healing. A technical hierarchy of wound creation methods was identified across three main categories: mechanical approaches (e.g., pipette tips and cell scrapers), accessible but prone to operator-dependent variability; semi-automated systems (e.g., inserts and wound maker devices), which improve reproducibility; and fully-automated robotic platforms offering high precision and high-throughput capability. While these advances enhance technical consistency, they do not overcome the assay's fundamental biological constraints. Importantly, gap closure in the wound-scratch assay primarily reflects planar collective cell migration and does not recapitulate the integrated inflammatory, vascular, metabolic, and extracellular matrix-dependent processes that govern wound repair in vivo. Consequently, bioactive compounds acting through antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, angiogenic, or matrix-modulating pathways may have their therapeutic potential underestimated or misclassified when assessed using migration-only readouts. Preliminary in-house (unpublished) data are presented to illustrate this limitation, demonstrating modest migration effects for compounds with established wound-healing activity in vivo. Despite these limitations, the wound-scratch assay remains a valuable first-line, hypothesis-generating tool when interpreted appropriately, with future utility dependent on integration with adapted models and complementary assays for translation.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.