Stimuli-responsive hydrogels for bone tissue engineering

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

The treatment of bone defects remains a great clinical challenge. With the development of science and technology, bone tissue engineering technology has emerged, which can mimic the structure and function of natural bone tissues and create solutions for repairing or replacing human bone tissues based on biocompatible materials, cells and bioactive factors. Hydrogels are favoured by researchers due to their high water content, degradability and good biocompatibility. This paper describes the hydrogel sources, roles and applications. According to the different types of stimuli, hydrogels are classified into three categories: physical, chemical and biochemical responses, and the applications of different stimuli-responsive hydrogels in bone tissue engineering are summarised. Stimuli-responsive hydrogels can form a semi-solid with good adhesion based on different physiological environments, which can carry a variety of bone-enhancing bioactive factors, drugs and cells, and have a long retention time in the local area, which is conducive to a long period of controlled release; they can also form a scaffold for constructing tissue repair, which can jointly promote the repair of bone injury sites. However, it also has many defects, such as poor biocompatibility, immunogenicity and mechanical stability. Further studies are still needed in the future to facilitate its clinical translati

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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