Advances in peptide applications for hard tissue repair and regeneration: multidisciplinary perspectives

The rising prevalence of bone and dental diseases, compounded by an ageing population, underscores the urgent need for advanced materials in hard tissue repair and regeneration. Peptides, with their high specificity and bioactivity, show great potential for enhancing mineralisation and promoting hard tissue repair, but their broader value lies in their sequence-programmable capacity to regulate mineral-matrix interface interactions, cellular responses and material integration. However, existing studies often focus on specific applications, single peptide classes or isolated material platforms, lacking a systematic multidisciplinary perspective. This review integrates recent advances in materials science, pharmacology, artificial intelligence, and food-derived peptide research, within a sequence-to-system framework, offering a comprehensive exploration of peptide classification, sources, preparation methods, screening technologies, delivery mechanisms, smart material design, and their applications in hard tissue repair and regeneration. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this work seeks to provide new insights and directions for future research, with the aim of converting dispersed peptide sequences, material systems and biological outcomes into a coherent design logic for rational and translatable hard tissue regeneration.