Revolutionizing neural regeneration with smart responsive materials: Current insights and future prospects

Smart-responsive materials, which possess the capacity to receive signals from the environment and engage in dynamic communication with it, have significantly expanded the frontiers of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. They hold substantial potential for the evolution of precise and distinctive therapeutic systems within the domain of neural regeneration. In the wake of the continuous advancement of science and technology, researchers have delved deeply into diverse response mechanisms and have successively developed multiple generations of smart responsive materials (SRM) for applications such as drug delivery, graft fabrication, and detection platforms in neural regeneration, yet a lack of a comprehensive and systematic review to provide informative references for researchers in the related fields. Therefore, in this review, we comprehensively summarize the response mechanisms and classifications of smart-responsive materials, with particular emphasis on the research and development progress and application modalities of various SRM in the field of neural regeneration, including peripheral nerve injury, spinal cord injury, and trauma brain injury. Additionally, the limitations of diverse smart-responsive materials in neural regeneration are meticulously dissected, and the efforts for developing new smart-responsive materials for neural regeneration was emphasized. Eventually, the prospects and forthcoming trends of smart-responsive materials in nerve regeneration are prominently spotlighted. It is anticipated that this review will furnish a crucial reference for the utilization of smart-responsive materials across various tissue engineering fields.