"Smart" Stimuli-Responsive Injectable Gels for Bone Tissue Engineering Application.

Bone grafting, as the current gold-standard for large scaled bone damage of various causes has faced challenges from both the source and appliance. Emerging new tissue engineering substi-tutes are demonstrating more options and possibilities, with their improved biocompatibility, accessibility, and customizable function. Amongst them, injectable gels (IGs) are a class of gel material displaying astonishing non-invasive property and surgical viability. While possessing responsiveness towards specific stimuli, they change their physical form in vivo, thus serve as wonderful biomaterials and drug delivery systems. In this review, we illustrated the mechanics of stimuli-responsive IGs developed during the pass decade. Two branches of crosslinked gels - co-valent and non-covalent crosslinked IGs and their composition and customization were intro-duced. In conclusion, we summarized the present trend in bone tissue engineering research, and made an outlook for future. We hope that this comprehensive review could provide a proper reference for the development of new IGs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.