Wet-adhesive materials of oral and maxillofacial region: From design to application

Oral and maxillofacial diseases are a group of high-incidence disorders that affect people's life quality to a great extent, while the wet and highly movable environment of the related regions brings challenges to traditional therapies. Faced with the obstacles of insufficient adhesive strength and ensuing short drug retention time, conventional oral therapeutic agents often have difficulty in achieving their desired efficacy. Oral and maxillofacial wet-adhesive materials have the advantages of excellent wet environment retention, internal stability, plasticity, and clinical potential, thus have become a significant research direction in the field of oral related disorders healing. In the past decade, the development of oral adhesive materials with good wet adhesion has accelerated based on the chemical molecular interaction, physical interlocking, and biological adhesion mechanisms, including biomimetic-inspired materials, naturally derived polymer–based materials and adhesive electrospun fiber films. These fancy wet-adhesive materials can be used for oral mucosal drug delivery, oral vaccination, wound healing, and bone defects treatments. Despite their numerous novel applications, wet-adhesive materials in stomatology still face unresolved challenges from material and biological aspects. Here, advances in designs of oral and maxillofacial wet-adhesive materials are reviewed in terms of design backgrounds, attachment mechanisms, and common classifications. Recent demonstrations of wet-adhesive materials for oral and maxillofacial region medical applications from drug delivery to multifunctional tissue treatments are presented. To conclude, current challenges and prospects on potential applications of oral and maxillofacial wet-adhesive materials are also briefly discussed.