Supramolecular Soft Biomaterials for Biomedical Applications - In-Situ Gelling Polymers: For Biomedical Applications - page 104

Supramolecular Soft Biomaterials
for Biomedical Applications

Enyi Ye, Pei Lin Chee, Ankshita Prasad, Xiaotian Fang, Cally Owh,
Valerie Jing Jing Yeo and Xian Jun Loh

Abstract Rapidly aging societies, demands for improved organ functions and repair
of damaged tissues has led to the use of synthetic materials in different parts of our
body. Traditional covalent chemistry has served us well in terms of the design of
materials. The future of soft biomaterials demands the ease of synthesis, multi-func-
tionality and efficacy. Supramolecular hydrogels are the next-generation materials to
enter the biomedical arena. These materials are three-dimensional entities built from
crosslinking agents which bond non-covalently (via hydrogen bonds, ˀ - ˀ stacking
and van der Waals interactions) to produce fibers and crosslinking among fibers. The
properties of these materials are vastly different from their covalent counterparts and
the exciting developments are summarized in this review.

Keywords Supramolecular · Dynamic systems · Host-guest · Biomaterials ·
Hierarchical self-assembly

1 Introduction

According to the classical explanation of the Nobel Laureate Jean-Marie Lehn,
supramolecular chemistry is the chemistry of molecular assemblies (supramolecu-
lar system with specific structure and functionality) formed through the intermolec-
ular interactions among two or more chemical species [ 1 , 2 ]. Polymeric hydrogels