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REVIEW article

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1389733

Advance "smart"-responsive in-situ hydrogel system applied in bone tissues engineering Provisionally Accepted

 Shunli Wu1, 2 Tingting Gai3 Jie Chen4* Xiguang Chen1, 5* Weikai Chen6*
  • 1College of Marine Life Science, Ocean University of China, China
  • 2Hangzhou Singclean Medical Products Co., Ltd., China
  • 3School of Medicine, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China, China
  • 4Jiaxing Vocational Technical College, Department of Student Affairs, Jiaxing, Zhejiang, China, China
  • 5Laoshan Laboratory, Qingdao, Shandong, China, China
  • 6Department of Orthopedics, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hosptial of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China, China

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The repair of irregular bone tissue is still suffering severe clinical problems, due to scarcity of the appropriate therapeutic carrier to match the dynamic and complex bone damage. Fortunately, the stimuli-responsive in-situ hydrogel systems, which are triggered by special microenvironment, pave an ideal way to regenerate bone tissue, because of possessing the injectability, in-situ gelatin and spatiotemporally tunable releasing drugs. Herein, we introduce the two main stimulus-response approaches (exogenous stimulus-response and endogenous stimulus-response) to form in-situ hydrogels in bone tissue engineering. Firstly, we summarized specific and distinct responses to an extensively range of external stimuli (e.g., Ultraviolet, Near Infrared, Ultrasound, etc.) to in-situ form hydrogels, which modified biocompatible materials by various functional groups or hybrid functional nanoparticles. Furthermore, “Smart” hydrogels, which is respond to endogenous physiological environmental stimulus (e.g., Temperature, pH, Enzyme, etc.), can achieve the in-situ gelation by once injection in vivo without extra work. Moreover, the mild chemistry respond mediated in-situ hydrogel systems also playing fascinating prospects in bone tissue engineering, such as Diesel-Alder reaction, Michael addition reaction, Thiol-Michael addition reaction, and Schiff, etc. The recent developments and challenges of various “Smart” in-situ hydrogels and their application to drug administration and bone tissue engineering is concerned in this review. It is anticipated that advanced strategies and innovative ideas of in-situ hydrogels will be exploited in the clinical field and increase the life quality of bone damage patients.

Keywords: Exogenous stimulus, Endogenous stimulus, In-situ hydrogels, Smart hydrogels, bone tissue engineering

Received: 22 Feb 2024; Accepted: 15 Apr 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Wu, Gai, Chen, Chen and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Mr. Jie Chen, Jiaxing Vocational Technical College, Department of Student Affairs, Jiaxing, Zhejiang, China, Jiaxing, China
Prof. Xiguang Chen, College of Marine Life Science, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003, Shandong Province, China
Dr. Weikai Chen, Department of Orthopedics, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hosptial of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China, Wenzhou, China