MINI REVIEW article
Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Cell Adhesion and Migration
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1696209
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Bone and Soft Tissue Repair: Bioengineering from Cellular Insights to Clinical ApplicationsView all 4 articles
Advances in Mild Photothermal Hydrogel-Based Therapies for Bone and Soft Tissue Injuries
Provisionally accepted
- Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, China
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Bone and soft tissue injuries resulting from trauma, metabolic disorders, and tumors pose a serious threat to public health, and their treatment faces numerous challenges, including infection, chronic inflammation, and impaired vascularization. Photothermal hydrogels, a new class of biomaterials, can sterilize tissues via photothermal therapy (PTT) and, through intelligent material design, exhibit multiple biological functions such as modulating the pathological microenvironment in bone and soft tissues. These properties have earned them a reputation as a "star material" in tissue engineering. However, excessive heating (above 50 °C) can cause irreversible thermal damage to tissues. Therefore, functional hydrogels that generate a mild photothermal effect (approximately 40–45 °C) have recently become a research focus. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the types and fabrication strategies of photothermal agents used in mild photothermal hydrogels, systematically summarizes recent progress in their applications for bone and soft tissue injury repair, and delves into the underlying mechanisms by which they promote tissue regeneration. By summarizing current findings and outlining future perspectives on the use of mild photothermal hydrogels in modern regenerative medicine, we aim to advance the development of tissue engineering.
Keywords: Hydrogels, Mild photothermal effect, tissue repair, Bone Regeneration, multifunctional materials
Received: 31 Aug 2025; Accepted: 19 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Na, Jiang, lv, Yang and Li. 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: Xian-zhuo Chen, chen.x.z@hotmail.com
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