A Rapidly Self-Healing Host-Guest Supramolecular Hydrogel with High Mechanical Strength and Excellent Biocompatibility

Development of biomedical hydrogels for rheumatoid arthritis treatment

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disorder that hinders the normal functioning of bones and joints and reduces the quality of human life. Every year, millions of people are diagnosed with RA worldwide, particularly among elderly individuals and women. Therefore, there is a global need to develop new biomaterials, medicines and therapeutic methods for treating RA. This will improve the Healthcare Access and Quality Index and also relieve administrative and financial burdens on healthcare service providers at a global scale. Hydrogels are soft and cross-linked polymeric materials that can store a chunk of fluids, drugs and biomolecules for hydration and therapeutic applications. Hydrogels are biocompatible and exhibit excellent mechanical properties, such as providing elastic cushions to articulating joints by mimicking the natural synovial fluid. Hence, hydrogels create a natural biological environment within the synovial cavity to reduce autoimmune reactions and friction. Hydrogels also lubricate the articulating joint surfaces to prevent degradation of synovial surfaces of bones and cartilage, thus exhibiting high potential for treating RA. This work reviews the progress in injectable and implantable hydrogels, synthesis methods, types of drugs, advantages and challenges. Additionally, it discusses the role of hydrogels in targeted drug delivery, mechanistic behaviour and tribological performance for RA treatment.

Self-Healing Hydrogels: Development, Biomedical Applications, and Challenges

Polymeric hydrogels have drawn considerable attention as a biomedical material for their unique mechanical and chemical properties, which are very similar to natural tissues. Among the conventional hydrogel materials, self-healing hydrogels (SHH) are showing their promise in biomedical applications in tissue engineering, wound healing, and drug delivery. Additionally, their responses can be controlled via external stimuli (e.g., pH, temperature, pressure, or radiation). Identifying a suitable combination of viscous and elastic materials, lipophilicity and biocompatibility are crucial challenges in the development of SHH. Furthermore, the trade-off relation between the healing performance and the mechanical toughness also limits their real-time applications. Additionally, short-term and long-term effects of many SHH in the in vivo model are yet to be reported. This review will discuss the mechanism of various SHH, their recent advancements, and their challenges in tissue engineering, wound healing, and drug delivery.

An Overview of the Supramolecular Systems for Gene and Drug Delivery in Tissue Regeneration

Tissue regeneration is a prominent area of research, developing biomaterials aimed to be tunable, mechanistic scaffolds that mimic the physiological environment of the tissue. These biomaterials are projected to effectively possess similar chemical and biological properties, while at the same time are required to be safely and quickly degradable in the body once the desired restoration is achieved. Supramolecular systems composed of reversible, non-covalently connected, self-assembly units that respond to biological stimuli and signal cells have efficiently been developed as preferred biomaterials. Their biocompatibility and the ability to engineer the functionality have led to promising results in regenerative therapy. This review was intended to illuminate those who wish to envisage the niche translational research in regenerative therapy by summarizing the various explored types, chemistry, mechanisms, stimuli receptivity, and other advancements of supramolecular systems.

Highly Resilient Dual-Crosslinked Hydrogel Adhesives Based on a Dopamine-Modified Crosslinker

Hydrogels are promising material for wound dressing and tissue engineering. However, owing to their low tissue adhesion in a moist environment and lack of flexibility, hydrogels are still not widely applied in movable parts, such as joints. Herein, we report a dual-crosslinked hydrogel adhesive using a dopamine-modified and acrylate-terminated crosslinker, tri(ethylene glycol) diacrylate-dopamine crosslinker (TDC). The covalent crosslinking was formed by photopolymerization between acrylic acid (AA) and TDC, and the noncovalent crosslinking was formed by intermolecular dopamine-dopamine and dopamine-AA interactions. Our resultant hydrogel demonstrated strong tissue adhesion in a moist environment (approximately 71 kPa) and high mechanical resilience (approximately 94%) with immediate recovery at a 200% strain rate. Moreover, it accelerated wound healing upon dressing the wound site properly. Our study provides the potential for advanced polymer synthesis by introducing a functional crosslinking agent.

Recent advances in host-guest supramolecular hydrogels for biomedical applications

The recognition-directed host-guest interaction is recognized as a valuable tool for creating supramolecular polymers. Functional hydrogels constructed through the dynamic and reversible host-guest complexation are endowed with a great many appealing features, such as superior self-healing, injectability, flexibility, stimuli-responsiveness and biocompatibility, which are crucial for biological and medicinal applications. With numerous topological structures and host-guest combinations established previously, recent breakthroughs in this area mostly focus on further improvement and fine-tuning of various properties for practical utilizations. The current contribution provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in host-guest supramolecular hydrogels, with a particular emphasis on the innovative molecular-level design strategies and hydrogel formation methodologies targeting at a wide range of active biomedical domains, including drug delivery, 3D printing, wound healing, tissue engineering, artificial actuators, biosensors, etc. Furthermore, a brief conclusion and discussion on the steps forward to bring these smart hydrogels to clinical practice is also presented.

Environment tolerant, adaptable and stretchable organohydrogels: preparation, optimization, and applications

Multiple stretchable materials have been successively developed and applied to wearable devices, soft robotics, and tissue engineering. Organohydrogels are currently being widely studied and formed by dispersing immiscible hydrophilic/hydrophobic polymer networks or only hydrophilic polymer networks in an organic/water solvent system. In particular, they can not only inherit and carry forward the merits of hydrogels, but also have some unique advantageous features, such as anti-freezing and water retention abilities, solvent resistance, adjustable surface wettability, and shape memory effect, which are conducive to the wide environmental adaptability and intelligent applications. This review first summarizes the structure, preparation strategy, and unique advantages of the reported organohydrogels. Furthermore, organohydrogels can be optimized for electro-mechanical properties or endowed with various functionalities by adding or modifying various functional components owing to their modifiability. Correspondingly, different optimization strategies, mechanisms, and advanced developments are described in detail, mainly involving the mechanical properties, conductivity, adhesion, self-healing properties, and antibacterial properties of organohydrogels. Moreover, the applications of organohydrogels in flexible sensors, energy storage devices, nanogenerators, and biomedicine have been summarized, confirming their unlimited potential in future development. Finally, the existing challenges and future prospects of organohydrogels are provided.

Tough and Highly Efficient Underwater Self-Repairing Hydrogels for Soft Electronics

The vulnerability of hydrogel electronic materials to mechanical damage due to their soft nature has necessitated the development of self-repairing hydrogel electronics. However, the development of such material with underwater self-repairing capability as well as excellent mechanical properties for application in aquatic environments is highly challenging and has not yet been fully realized. This study designs a tough and highly efficient underwater self-repairing supramolecular hydrogel by synergistically combining weak hydrogen bonds (H-bonds) and strong dipole-dipole interactions. The resultant hydrogel has high stretchability (up to 700%) and toughness (4.45 MJ m^-3 ), and an almost 100% fast strain self-recovery (10 min). The underwater healing process is rapid and autonomous (98% self-repair efficiency after 1 h of healing). Supramolecular hydrogels can be developed as soft electronic sensors for physiological signal detection (gestures, breathing, microexpression, and vocalization) and real-time underwater communication (Morse code). Importantly, the hydrogel sensor can function underwater after mechanical damage because of its highly efficient underwater self-repairing capability.

Photo-switchable supramolecular comb-like polymer brush based on host-guest recognition for use as antimicrobial smart surface

Bacterial infections from biomedical devices pose a great threat to the health of humans and thus place a heavy burden on society. Therefore, developing efficient antibacterial surfaces has attracted much attention. However, it is a challenge to identify or develop a combination that efficiently integrates multiple functions via topological tailoring and on-demand function-switch via non-contact and noninvasive stimuli. To resolve this issue, a highly hydrophilic comb polymer brush was constructed here based on supramolecular host-guest recognition. Azobenzene (azo)-modified antifouling and antibacterial polymers were incorporated into cyclodextrin (CD)-modified antifouling polymer brushes grafted on the surface. The surface thus obtained possessed excellent antifouling performance with a low bacterial density of ∼6.25 × 10⁵ cells per cm² after 48 h and exhibited a high efficiency of ∼88.2% for killing bacteria. Besides, irradiation with UV light resulted in the desorption of the azo-polymers and a release of ∼85.1% attached bacteria. Irradiating visible light led to the re-adsorption of azo-polymers, which regenerated the fresh surface; the process could be repeated for at least three cycles, and the surface still maintained low bacterial attachments with a cell density of ∼7.10 × 10⁵ cells per cm², high sterilization efficiency of ∼93.8%, and a bacteria release rate of ∼83.1% in the 3rd cycle. The photo-switchable antibacterial surface presented in this research will provide new insights into the development of smart biomedical surfaces.

Enzyme immobilization in hydrogels: A perfect liaison for efficient and sustainable biocatalysis

Biocatalysis is an established chemical synthesis technology that has by no means been restricted to research laboratories. The use of enzymes for organic synthesis has evolved greatly from early development to proof‐of‐concept – from small batch production to industrial scale. Different enzyme immobilization strategies contributed to this success story. Recently, the use of hydrogel materials for the immobilization of enzymes has been attracting great interest. Within this review, we pay special attention to recent developments in this key emerging field of research. Firstly, we will briefly introduce the concepts of both biocatalysis and hydrogel worlds. Then, we list recent interesting publications that link both concepts. Finally, we provide an outlook and comment on future perspectives of further exploration of enzyme immobilization strategies in hydrogels.

Cyclodextrin-Cross-Linked Hydrogels for Adsorption and Photodegradation of Cationic Dyes in Aqueous Solution

Possessing three-dimensional porous structures and tunable mechanical strengths, cyclodextrin-containing polymeric hydrogels are one of the most promising water-based adsorbent materials due to their easy availability, simple chemical modification and environmental friendliness. In this work, two kinds of hydrogels were prepared via the copolymerization with acrylic acid and vinyl-derivatized β-cyclodextrins in water. These two gels have showed good adsorption performance towards cationic dyes through the noncovalent interactions with their anionic backbones and porous network. Meanwhile, pseudo-second-order model was selected to clarify the adsorption kinetics process. Moreover, nano-scaled TiO₂ was doped into these resultant cyclodextrins-based hydrogels to achieve efficient degradation of dyes upon light irradiation. The obtained TiO₂ -loaded hydrogels could exhibit improved adsorption performance and make the adsorbed dyes photo-degraded with the decolorization rates above 95%. It can be envisioned that such cyclodextrin-based soft materials may find applications in dye clearance and water treatment.

Structurally Dynamic Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications: Pursuing a Fine Balance between Macroscopic Stability and Microscopic Dynamics

Owing to their unique chemical and physical properties, hydrogels are attracting increasing attention in both basic and translational biomedical studies. Although the classical hydrogels with static networks have been widely reported for decades, a growing number of recent studies have shown that structurally dynamic hydrogels can better mimic the dynamics and functions of natural extracellular matrix (ECM) in soft tissues. These synthetic materials with defined compositions can recapitulate key chemical and biophysical properties of living tissues, providing an important means to understanding the mechanisms by which cells sense and remodel their surrounding microenvironments. This review begins with the overall expectation and design principles of dynamic hydrogels. We then highlight recent progress in the fabrication strategies of dynamic hydrogels including both degradation-dependent and degradation-independent approaches, followed by their unique properties and use in biomedical applications such as regenerative medicine, drug delivery, and 3D culture. Finally, challenges and emerging trends in the development and application of dynamic hydrogels are discussed.

Ti3C2Tx MXene-Activated Fast Gelation of Stretchable and Self-Healing Hydrogels: A Molecular Approach

MXene-based hydrogels, a flourishing family of soft materials, have recently emerged as promising candidates for stretchable electronics. Despite recent progress, most works use MXenes as conductive nanofillers. Herein, by tuning the molecular interactions between MXene nanosheets and other constituents within the hydrogels, we demonstrate Ti₃C₃T_x MXene can act as a versatile cross-linker to activate the fast gelation of a wide range of hydrogels, starting from various monomer- and polymer-based precursors. The gelation behavior varies significantly across hydrogels. In general, the fast gelation mechanism is attributed to the easier generation of free radicals with the help of Ti₃C₂T_x MXene and the presence of multiscale molecular interactions between MXene and polymers. The use of MXene as a dynamic cross-linker leads to superior mechanical properties, adhesion, and self-healing ability. Owing to the inherent photothermal behavior of Ti₃C₃T_x and the heterogeneous phase-transforming features of polymers, a polymer-MXene hydrogel is demonstrated to exhibit distinctive thermosensation-based actuation upon near-infrared illumination, accompanied by rapid shape transformation.

Stimuli-Responsive Biomolecule-Based Hydrogels and Their Applications

This Review presents polysaccharides, oligosaccharides, nucleic acids, peptides, and proteins as functional stimuli-responsive polymer scaffolds that yield hydrogels with controlled stiffness. Different physical or chemical triggers can be used to structurally reconfigure the crosslinking units and control the stiffness of the hydrogels. The integration of stimuli-responsive supramolecular complexes and stimuli-responsive biomolecular units as crosslinkers leads to hybrid hydrogels undergoing reversible triggered transitions across different stiffness states. Different applications of stimuli-responsive biomolecule-based hydrogels are discussed. The assembly of stimuli-responsive biomolecule-based hydrogel films on surfaces and their applications are discussed. The coating of drug-loaded nanoparticles with stimuli-responsive hydrogels for controlled drug release is also presented.

Synergistic Covalent and Supramolecular Polymers for Mechanically Robust but Dynamic Materials

Nature has engineered delicate synergistic covalent and supramolecular polymers (CSPs) to achieve advanced life functions, such as the thin filaments that assist in muscle contraction. Constructing artificial synergistic CSP materials with bioinspired mechanically adaptive features, however, represents a challenging goal. Here, we report an artificial CSP system to illustrate the integration of a covalent polymer (CP) and a supramolecular polymer (SP) in a synergistic fashion, along with the emergence of notable mechanical and dynamic properties which are unattainable when the two polymers are formed individually. The synergistic effect relies on the peculiar network structures of the SP and CPs, which endow the resultant CSPs with overall improved mechanical performance in terms of the stiffness, strength, stretchability, toughness, and elastic recovery. Moreover, the dynamic properties of the SP, including self-healing, stimuli-responsiveness, and reprocessing, are also retained in the CSPs, thus leading to their application as programmable and tunable materials.

A designed supramolecular cross-linking hydrogel for the direct, convenient, and efficient administration of hydrophobic drugs

Hydrogels formed through reversible supramolecular interactions may attain self-healing in the in situ environment. However, the low grafting degree of functional groups and steric hindrance effect of polymer backbones significantly reduced the self-healing efficacy and kinetics. To overcome these deficiencies, we designed a novel hydrogel via non-covalent host-guest interaction between β-cyclodextrin modified hyaluronic acid (HA-CD) and adamantane modified 4-arm-PEG (4-arm-PEG-Ad). The multi-armed monomer enabled to increase the number of functional groups and avoid steric hindrance effects, offering more efficient host-guest interaction. The insoluble dexamethasone could be loaded in the β-CDs' hydrophobic cavities. The designed hydrogels exhibited excellent self-healing properties. The mechanical strengths, swelling rate and release of dexamethasone could be adjusted by adding 4-arm-PEG-Ad. The novel hydrogels significantly improved the therapeutic effect of the dexamethasone in burn wound healing. Herein, these hydrogels had great potential for direct, convenient, and efficient delivery of hydrophobic drugs and improved their therapeutic effects.

Hydrogelation Landscape Engineering and a Novel Strategy To Design Radically Induced Healable and Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogels

Herein, we report the versatile ways to prepare both low-molecular weight hydrogels and polymeric hydrogels based on various types of supramolecular interactions, starting from a simple amphiphilic terpyridine-based molecule TPYA. Notably, we report that stable terpyridine-based radicals can be generated by light or heat irradiation in polymeric hydrogels based on hydrogen bonding interactions between -COOH of PAA and the terpyridine motif of TPYA for the first time. The generation of radicals is confirmed by EPR and UV-vis experiments, and the process is accompanied by significant color changes from white to dark purple. The stable radical hydrogels prepared by the supramolecular strategy are self-healing, stretchable, and self-supporting and can be molded into different geometrical shapes. It is deduced that the generation of terpyridine-based radicals enhances the intermolecular hydrogen bonding and π-π interaction of molecules in a hydrogel matrix, which is responsible for the self-healing ability. Finally, we also show that the radical gels can selectively respond to ammonia and stretch with reversible color changes based on the reversible hydrogen-bonding interaction.

Supramolecular and dynamic covalent hydrogel scaffolds: from gelation chemistry to enhanced cell retention and cartilage regeneration

This review highlights the most recent progress in gelation strategies of biomedical supramolecular and dynamic covalent crosslinking hydrogels and their applications for enhancing cell retention and cartilage regeneration.