Tough, Responsive and Soft Biomaterials for Tissue Repair and Regeneration*

Biomaterials find wide use in many branches of medicine and engineering. Success examples are hard biomaterials like titanium used in dentistry and prosthetics. Soft biomaterials, however, haven’t replicated these successes in repairing soft tissues. The reason is simple yet fundamental: existing soft biomaterials cannot match or integrate with soft tissues mechanically; they are often vulnerable to rupture and difficult to adhere on soft tissues, especially when interfacing with dynamic tissues such as skin and beating heart; their functionality is passive and limited. This talk will present new strategies and material systems to overcome these material constraints. A series of bioinspired hydrogel adhesives will be presented. One can be tougher than articular cartilage and achieve unprecedented adhesion performance on a variety of soft wet tissues, even under exposure of blood and dynamic movements [1]. The other can respond to the skin temperature, actively contract and heal skin wound effectively [2]. A mechanistic investigation with theoretical and computational mechanics approaches will be shown. This talk will also show how to realize spatiotemporal control of tissue adhesion on demand through controlling the surface and structure of the adhesive, and via external stimuli like ultrasound. This talk will highlight how to leverage a variety of physical, chemical and mechanical cues to finely tune the interactions between tissues and biomaterials to promote tissue repair and regeneration.
References
[1] Jianyu Li, et al., Tough adhesives for diverse wet surfaces, Science, 357, 6349, 378-381 (2017).
[2] Serena Blacklow†, Jianyu Li†, et al., Bioinspired mechanically active adhesive dressings to accelerate wound closure, Science Advances, 5, 7, eaaw3963 (2019).