Spatiotemporal self-strengthening hydrogels for oral tissue regeneration

As the forefront of the digestive system, a mouth in a high moist microenvironment is easy to breed bacteria and the inevitable injury from oral surgeries will cause a series of physiological disorders. The injectable hydrogels are promising biomaterials to solve this challenge, but the limited mechanical performance and weak mechanical adjustment are insufficient to fit in the whole healing process. Herein, we propose and design a new spatiotemporal self-strengthening injectable hydrogel via manipulating the time-dependent cross-linking effects after the Schiff base reaction. The resultant hydrogels possess various promising properties and functions, including rapid initial gelation efficiency (∼30 s), spatiotemporal adjustable mechanical strength, great antifouling property and biocompatibility, leading to effective promote oral tissue regeneration and bone repair. We believe both our concept and spatiotemporal self-strengthening injectable hydrogels will provide new insight into the hydrogel-based wound dressing and broaden the application of the bioinspired hydrogels in biomedical fields.