Disclosed are compositions arid methods for accelerating wound closure and preventing inhibiting or reducing scarring or fibrosis. The methods of the present invention include administering to a person in need thereof an effective amount of a pharmaceutical composition comprising collagen 7 and/or one: or snore functional fragments or variants thereof. The functional fragments generally comprise at last one of the nine Fibronectin Type Ill-like Region of the NC1 region of collagen 7.