Wound healing repairs injured tissues to restore functionality, which depends on multiple factors: site of occurrence, type of wound, age of the host, and ethics. Mechanical force may play important roles in wound repair and regeneration. Regenerative medicine has great potential, but the main challenge is how to elicit and harness the power of regeneration. Injuries can lead to repair (scar formation) or regeneration (no scar). During repair, the wound heals incompletely and lacks architectural and functional restoration. During regeneration the original tissue is reformed and total architecture with complete function is attained.
In order to tackle the roles of mechanical forces and exosome secretion in the inflammatory microenvironment in physiological and pathological skin wound repair and regeneration, NCKU launched International Center for Wound Repair and Regeneration (iWRR) in 2012. iWRR has received funding from University Advancement at NCKU via Higher Education Sprout Project and also from Ministry of Science and Technology (Featured Areas Research Center Program) since 2018. iWRR holds vision that is international and innovative, values industrial-academic collaboration and preservation of culture integrity. Through a strong team of multi-disciplinary scientists with abundant clinical experience and basic biomedical research background, we strive for development and application of translational medicine and biotechnology. Our three major areas of research are: (1) Pathophysiological and molecular mechanism for scar and fibrosis; (2) Mechanobiology of wound repair and regeneration; (3) Blastema formation and tissue regeneration. 
Distinguished Professor Ming-Jer Tang, the Director of iWRR, encourages efforts in giving back to the society: (1) establishing a start-up company that focuses on healing and treating wounds to develop new diagnosis technology in medicine; (2) fundraising to help patients with rare disease such as Epidermolysis bullosa.