Review: advances in snail mucus-inspired biomaterials for diabetic wound repair.

Abstract

Diabetic wounds are a class of chronic non-healing wounds driven by multiple interacting factors. Conventional therapies remain limited in their ability to actively modulate the wound microenvironment and promote coordinated tissue regeneration. In this context, naturally derived biomaterials with combined biological activity and material functionality have attracted increasing attention. Among them, snail mucus has emerged as a promising source of inspiration because of its multicomponent composition and potential roles in hydration, adhesion, barrier protection, antimicrobial activity, immune regulation, and tissue repair. This review summarizes recent advances in snail mucus and snail mucus-inspired materials for diabetic wound repair, with emphasis on the pathological basis of impaired diabetic wound healing, the biological functions and biomaterial potential of key components, and the engineering strategies derived from these components. We further discuss how snail mucus-derived materials can be reconstructed through hydration and wet-interface control, bioactive component immobilization and presentation, protein-polymer assembly, and spatial or nanoscale integration to regulate material properties and therapeutic functions. Although these materials have shown promising effects in inflammation modulation, antibacterial protection, angiogenesis, re-epithelialization, and tissue reconstruction, current evidence remains largely limited to preclinical studies. Challenges related to raw-material standardization, component definition, biosafety evaluation, and translational validation remain to be addressed. Overall, snail mucus represents not only a natural source of bioactive components for biomaterial construction but also a biomimetic design prototype for developing functional materials for chronic diabetic wound repair.