Advances in hydrogel systems for bone regeneration: trends, innovations, and prospects

Hydrogels for bone regeneration have expanded the therapeutic approaches for bone injury repair by integrating traditional and novel biomaterials. However, this field urgently requires systematic research trend analysis. Based on multidimensional bibliometric mapping, this review conducted analyses including journal citations, international collaborations, spatiotemporal output distribution, and co-citation clustering. It revealed that the annual publication volume in the field of bone regeneration hydrogels has shown exponential growth, with increasing attention from the research community. Additionally, this study systematically reviewed hot biomaterials such as hydrogels loaded with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)/extracellular vesicles (EVs), hydrogels based on decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM), hydrogels based on silk fibroin (SF) and responsive hydrogels. It innovatively proposed five targeted strategies for bone repair material design-regulating bone homeostasis, modulating the bone immune microenvironment, promoting vascularized bone regeneration, regulating oxidative stress, and neural regulation. This strategic framework constructs a material-mechanism coupling model from the biological essence, providing a new research perspective for the field of bone regeneration hydrogels and laying the foundation for the development of future bone regeneration materials.