Stimuli-Responsive Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering Applications.

The use of 'smart materials,' or 'stimulus-responsive' materials, has proven useful in a variety of fields, including tissue engineering and medication delivery. Many factors, including temperature, pH, redox-state, light, and magnetic fields, are being studied for their potential to affect a material's properties, interactions, structure, and/or dimensions. New tissue engineering and drug delivery methods are made possible by the ability of living systems to respond to both external stimuli and their own internal signals (for example, materials composed of stimuli-responsive polymers that self-assemble or undergo phase transitions or morphology transformation. The researcher examines the potential of smart materials as controlled drug release vehicles in tissue engineering, aiming to enable the localized regeneration of injured tissue by delivering precisely dosed drugs at precisely timed intervals.