Collagen-based nanomaterials for tissue engineering: A review from nanocollagen to collagen-based nanocomposites

Collagen is widely used as a scaffold material and drug delivery vehicle in tissue engineering due to its excellent biocompatibility and low immunogenicity. However, conventional collagen-based biomaterials suffer from inadequate mechanical strength, poor thermal stability, and excessively rapid degradation. Nanotechnology provides effective strategies to overcome these limitations. Collagen-based nanomaterials generally exhibit significantly enhanced mechanical properties and thermal stability, prolonged drug half-life, and optimized drug release behavior, showing great promise for repairing skin, bone, cornea, nerve, and vascular tissues. Despite these advances, systematic reviews that capture the latest developments in this rapidly evolving field remain scarce. This review therefore offers a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of recent progress in collagen-based nanomaterials across the aforementioned applications, discusses emerging functionalization strategies and expanding application scenarios, and evaluates the potential for clinical translation, aiming to guide future research in this area.