The recent advancement in the chitosan-based thermosensitive hydrogel for tissue regeneration

To date, hydrogel-based scaffolds have opened new prospects for potential applications for drug delivery and regeneration. The novel delivery strategies such as thermo-sensitive hydrogels can improve their performance via the controllable release of therapeutic/bioactive agents in response to changes in temperature. Chitosan (CS) is a natural safe copolymer with good biocompatibility and biodegradability. Recently, chitosan-based formulations have attracted a lot of interest for thermo-sensitive injectable hydrogels. Thermo-sensitive chitosan-based hydrogels provide the proper manner for the smart drug delivery and tissue engineering. This review is focused to the recent progression of the various thermo-sensitive and biodegradable chitosan-based hydrogels that have been developed for different tissue (bone, cartilage, nucleus pulposus, cardiac, and wound) engineering and smart drug/cell delivery. Subsequently, future perspectives and challenges of thermo-sensitive CS-based hydrogels are discussed briefly.