Self-Healing Hydrogels for Applications in Regenerative Medicine (2nd Edition)

Dear Colleagues,

Organisms in nature have shown fascinating abilities with respect to self-healing and regenerating their structural and functional properties after damage caused by trauma or diseases. This outstanding self-management of damage is the most important source of inspiration for the design and engineering of materials capable of reversing damage development. Inspired by this concept, Scott White and Nancy Sottos first reported the discovery of self-healing materials in 2001, thus leading to a new era in materials science and engineering. Following this finding, self-healing hydrogels have been developed, which are hydrophilic polymer networks that, after damage, can revert to their original state with full or partial recovery of mechanical strength. Due to their resemblance to the extracellular matrices of tissue/organs, hydrogels capable of self-recovery are expected to be candidate materials for applications in regenerative medicine. Indeed, the past decade has witnessed the development of self-healing gels for applications in tissue engineering, controlled drug/cell delivery, injectable defect filler materials, and 3D bioprinting, which can be attributed to their special viscoelastic properties and mechanical durability. In this Special Issue, we will focus on recent progress in the design of self-healing hydrogels for biomedical applications. We will discuss the potential use of self-healing gels for different fields of tissue regeneration. In particular, we envision the future directions of this research area to proliferate the development of practically useful self-healing materials and their applications in regenerative medicine. We look forward to the submission of new research on self-healing gels and their recent applications in regenerative medicine.

Prof. Dr. Huanan Wang
Dr. Kaiwen Chen
Guest Editors

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• self-healing
• hydrogels
• reversible crosslinking
• shear-thinning
• regenerative medicine
• cell-based therapy
• 3D bioprinting

• Self-Healing Hydrogels for Applications in Regenerative Medicine in Gels (5 articles)