Application Prospect of Hydrogels in the Treatment of Osteochondral Lesions
A special issue of Pharmaceutics (ISSN 1999-4923). This special issue belongs to the section "Drug Targeting and Design".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 January 2025 | Viewed by 3869
Special Issue Editors
2. ICVS/3B’s—PT Government Associate Laboratory, Guimarães, Portugal
Interests: tissue engineering; regenerative medicine; biomaterials; hydrogels; biomimetics; biodegradable materials; osteochondral regeneration
Interests: tissue engineering; regenerative medicine; biomaterials; biomimetics; biodegradable materials; 3D in vitro models; cancer modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: nanobiomaterials; nanomedicine; theranostics; tissue engineering; bio 3D printing; 3D in vitro tissue models of disease
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The treatment of osteochondral (OC) lesions is complex due to the limited potential for cartilage and subchondral bone to heal. When OC lesions are not correctly restored, they can lead to osteoarthritis. Recent advancements in hydrogels have shown promise in many applications, including drug delivery systems and cell-laden materials. Hydrogels present a range of features, including a high water content that can partially emulate native tissues’ extracellular matrix, good permeability to nutrients and excretion metabolites, cytocompatibility, easy processability and modification, and tunable mechanical properties. In recent years, increasing research efforts have been focused on designing multifunctional injectable hydrogels and hierarchical scaffolds for OC tissue regeneration. Techniques such as scaffolding, bioprinting, in vitro OC models-on-chip, and drug-delivery systems have shown particular promise in this area.
This Special Issue aims to present the current developments of hydrogels for OC treatment, namely regarding drug delivery systems, cell-laden hydrogels, OC models-on-chip, and nanoparticle-loaded hydrogels. We invite you to submit your recent work on the use of hydrogels in treating OC defects. Both original research articles and reviews are welcome.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Fátima Raquel Maia
Prof. Dr. Rui L. Reis
Dr. Joaquim Miguel Oliveira
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- hydrogels
- osteochondral defects
- drug-delivery systems
- cell-laden hydrogels
- nanoparticle-loaded hydrogels
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