REVIEW article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Biomaterials
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2025.1577192
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Glycopeptide Hydrogel for Tissue EngineeringView all 5 articles
Recent Advances in Glycopeptide Hydrogels: Design, Biological Functions, and Biomedical Applications
Provisionally accepted
- Nanjing General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
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Glycopeptide hydrogels, biomaterials constructed from polysaccharides and peptides through dynamic covalent bonding and supramolecular interactions, mimic the structure and functions of the natural extracellular matrix. Their three-dimensional network structure endows them with remarkable mechanical resilience, self-healing capacity, and stimuli-responsive behavior, enabling diverse biomedical applications in tissue regeneration, wound healing, drug delivery, and antimicrobial therapies. This review comprehensively examines design principles for engineering glycopeptide hydrogels, encompassing biomolecular selection criteria and dynamic crosslinking methodologies. We analyze their multifunctional properties including antimicrobial efficacy, immunomodulation, antioxidant activity, tissue adhesion, and angiogenic potential, while highlighting smart drug release mechanisms. Applications in regenerative medicine are critically assessed, particularly in cutaneous wound healing, bone and cartilage reconstruction, myocardial repair, and neural regeneration. Finally, we delineate future directions to advance glycopeptide hydrogels, emphasizing functional sequence expansion of bioactive motifs, high-fidelity biomechanical mimicry of natural tissues, and precise simulation of organ-specific microenvironments for next-generation precision medicine.
Keywords: Dynamic hydrogel, supramolecular hydrogel, Self-assembling peptide hydrogel, Injectable hydrogel, Tissue Engineering
Received: 15 Feb 2025; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang and Zou. 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: Jinpeng Zhang, Nanjing General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command, Nanjing, 210002, Jiangsu Province, China
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