Bioengineering Nano and Micro-Gels for Biomedical Applications

Dear Colleagues,

The aim of this Special Issue is to review, evaluate and understand the complexity of materials as constituents of integrated devices for diagnosis, therapy, and advanced solutions in biomedical field.

Hydrogels, and especially nano and microgels, are assuming an increasingly important role in a variety of applications due to their unmet characteristics including hydrophilicity, biocompatibility, highly flexible chemical characteristics. The non-fouling nature, easy probe accessibility and target diffusion, the possibility of moieties inclusion within their structure, render hydrogels promising substrates for biomedical applications.

Microgels have already been successfully used in immunoassays, sensitive nucleic acid assays, and to enable hydrogel-based suspension arrays. Similarly, nano and microgels are widely used as carriers for therapeutics or contrast agents in drug-delivery and multi-imaging applications. Tissue engineering, as well, benefits of such class of materials to recapitulate functional organs.

This Special Issue will provide the opportunity to understand, analyze, evaluate and possibly address the challenges that these materials pose, highlighting the versatility and flexibility in the synthesis and in the functions with regard to the integration with miniaturized systems (i.e., microTAS, LOC, Tissue on a Chip) and imaging techniques to perform next generation applications.

We invite you to contribute with original research papers, as well as comprehensive reviews, aligned with these themes, to advance and improve the actual state-of-the-art in bioengineering, providing new opportunities, approaches and solutions to biological problems.

Dr. Battista Edmondo
Prof. Dr. Ibthisam Tothill
Prof. Dr. Paolo Antonio Netti
Prof. Dr. Filippo Causa
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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