Injectable and biodegradable hydrogels have been regarded as encouraging materials in the biomedical field because they had a similar three-dimensional microenvironment with native tissues and cells that could be effortlessly… Click to show full abstract
Injectable and biodegradable hydrogels have been regarded as encouraging materials in the biomedical field because they had a similar three-dimensional microenvironment with native tissues and cells that could be effortlessly encapsulated within these hydrogels dispersedly. During the period of tissue regeneration, biodegradable hydrogels could be degraded with the deposition of extracellular matrix secreted by cells, thus serving as a promising “temporary extracellular matrix” in remodeling. However, due to the lack of precise microarchitecture control and the limited ability to reconstruct living structures containing complex anisotropic microenvironment, hydrogels with precise topographic cues remains an ongoing challenge. Considering these shortcomings, nanocomposite hydrogels which consisted of nanomaterials and hydrogels enable improve directed structure formation at the multiscale. The integration of nanomaterials, such as nanofibers, nanoparticles, nanoclay and nanogel, and hydrogel endow new mechanical and functional properties, which will be highly beneficial for various biomedical applications, especially tissue engineering and regeneration. Here, this Research Topic collected a total of four original research papers, which described different kinds of injectable hydrogels from the design, preparation and evaluation. The papers on this Research Topic are briefly shared below. Silk fibroin (SF) materials have been applied as an appealing biomaterial in the biomedical and pharmaceutical area over the past few decades. Haghighattalab et al. added magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) into silk fibroin hydrogel and loaded with doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) in the meantime using a straightforward blending method to determine the capacity of controlled drug release under the diversified external OPEN ACCESS
               
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