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Stimuli-Responsive Delivery of Growth Factors for Tissue Engineering
Moyuan Qu1,2, Xing Jiang1,3, Xingwu Zhou1,4
1Department of Bioengineering, California NanoSystems Institute and Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT) University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Advanced Healthcare Materials
|March 4, 2020
Summary
Smart materials offer controlled release of growth factors (GFs) for tissue regeneration, overcoming limitations of short half-lives and side effects. This review explores stimuli-responsive vehicles for targeted GF delivery in various tissues.
Area of Science:
- Biomaterials Science
- Regenerative Medicine
- Tissue Engineering
Background:
- Growth factors (GFs) are vital for stem cell regulation and tissue repair.
- Therapeutic GF delivery faces challenges due to short physiological half-life and off-target effects.
- "Smart" materials are being developed to overcome these limitations for enhanced GF delivery.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review current research on stimuli-responsive materials for controlled growth factor delivery.
- To discuss applications in skin, bone, cartilage, muscle, blood vessel, and nerve tissue engineering.
- To highlight challenges and future perspectives in stimuli-responsive GF delivery for tissue regeneration.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of stimuli-responsive materials for growth factor delivery.
- Analysis of material properties essential for controlled release: cargo protection, targeted delivery, and stimulus-responsive release.
- Discussion of applications across five key tissue engineering subfields.
Main Results:
- Stimuli-responsive materials offer sustained and on-demand release of growth factors.
- These materials protect encapsulated therapeutics and enable targeted delivery to injury sites.
- Controlled release modulation by disease-specific stimuli is a key feature of "smart" delivery systems.
Conclusions:
- Stimuli-responsive materials represent a promising strategy for advanced growth factor delivery in tissue engineering.
- Overcoming challenges in material design and application is crucial for future therapeutic success.
- Intelligent vehicles for stimuli-responsive GF delivery hold significant potential for diverse tissue regeneration applications.
