Iodine-containing materials for biomedical applications

Iodine has been widely used in the biomedical field for its broad-spectrum antibacterial potential, strong oxidation ability, and excellent biocompatibility. Nowadays, although abundant biomaterials have been developed for various therapeutic and diagnostic purposes, few of them can be applied clinically because of their unsatisfactory therapeutic effects, high cytotoxicity, or low stability. Iodine has been utilized to develop antiseptics for a long time. Some of the iodine-containing antiseptics, such as povidone-iodine and iodine tincture, show desirable effects and are used extensively in daily life. Besides the antibacterial potency of iodine, researchers have also demonstrated that iodine-containing biomaterials exhibit excellent performance in antitumor therapy, wound healing treatment, tissue engineering, and bioimaging and biodetection. In this review, we will summarize the recent progress of iodine-containing biomaterials in the above-mentioned biomedical applications and highlight the preparation, working mechanism, and therapeutic effect of iodine-containing biomaterials. The current challenges and future research directions in this field are also proposed.