REVIEW article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2025.1657015
This article is part of the Research TopicEngineered Biomaterials-Based Approaches For Probing and Directing Immune Cell ResponsesView all articles
Immunomodulatory Biomaterials for Vascularized and Innervated Skeletal Muscle Repair
Provisionally accepted
- University of Delaware, Newark, United States
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The repair of functional innervated and vascularized skeletal muscle from severe injuries, such as critical limb ischemia, denervation, and volumetric muscle loss, remains a critical clinical challenge. Regenerative cell therapies are often hindered by donor site morbidities and rapid clearance from injured tissue. Furthermore, emerging tissue engineering and biomaterials approaches are often stifled by–and may even worsen–the chronic, inflammatory microenvironment that debilitates these sites of muscle injury, as well as the underlying peripheral nerves and microvessels. Consequently, the role of the immune system in tissue repair has been increasingly studied and capitalized upon in the design of regenerative biomaterials to overcome these challenges. In this review, recent strategies for the development of immunomodulatory biomaterials for vascularized and innervated skeletal muscle repair will be discussed within the context of muscle, nervous, and vascular tissues, as well as the respective roles of immune cells and tissue progenitors during these repair processes. These strategies span chemical functionalization, sustained presentation of immunomodulatory cues, and inflammatory responses to natural and synthetic biomaterials, among other approaches.
Keywords: Biomaterials, Immunomodulation, muscle regeneration, innervation, vascularization
Received: 01 Jul 2025; Accepted: 08 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mottel, Shields and Kwee. 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: Brian Kwee, bkwee@udel.edu
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