Advanced Biomaterials for Musculoskeletal Disease Diagnosis, Treatment, and Repair

By connecting materials science with biology and medicine, advanced biomaterials have become pivotal for enhancing disease diagnosis, treatment, and tissue regeneration. Their regulated composition, structure, and functionality enable precise molecular and cellular interactions within biological systems. Recent advancements in nanomaterials, smart polymers, metal–organic frameworks, and bioresponsive composites have facilitated highly sensitive diagnostics, targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive therapies, and functional tissue repair. Such biomaterials can dynamically respond to disease microenvironments, such as changes in pH, redox status, enzyme activity, or inflammation, to provide site-specific and sustained therapeutic action. In diagnostics, they improve biosensing accuracy, imaging sensitivity, and real-time tracking of disease progression. When applied to musculoskeletal disorders, these materials also support the regeneration of bone, cartilage, and tendon tissues. Collectively, these innovations offer transformative solutions to critical clinical challenges, including poor therapeutic efficacy, systemic toxicity, delayed diagnosis, and limited tissue healing.The primary objective of this initiative is to develop and utilize advanced biomaterials that simultaneously enhance disease detection, treatment outcomes, and tissue regeneration. By integrating biological functionality with rational material design, this project aims to create multifunctional platforms capable of early disease diagnosis, targeted therapy, real-time monitoring of therapeutic response, and guided tissue repair. Special emphasis is placed on achieving high specificity, biocompatibility, mechanical suitability, and controlled behavior under physiological and pathological conditions. These biomaterials are designed to overcome limitations of conventional diagnostics and therapies, including low sensitivity, off-target effects, poor integration, and restricted clinical applicability. A further goal is to establish clear structure-function correlations to optimize material performance across diverse disease and injury contexts. Ultimately, this topic seeks to deliver translatable biomaterial strategies that enable more precise, effective, and patient-tailored approaches to disease management and tissue restoration, thereby improving personalized medicine and reducing systemic side effects.The scope of this Research Topic encompasses the broad and interdisciplinary field of advanced biomaterials for disease diagnosis, treatment, and tissue regeneration, spanning fundamental research to translational and clinical applications. Specific themes of interest include, but are not limited to:● Design and engineering of functional biomaterials for early disease detection, imaging, and biosensing;● Development of targeted and stimuli-responsive biomaterials for controlled drug, gene, and protein delivery;● Theragnostic platforms integrating diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities within a single system;● Application of nanomaterials, smart polymers, hydrogels, and bioinspired materials for precision medicine and regenerative applications;● Biomaterial-based strategies for osteochondral regeneration, tendon repair, and musculoskeletal tissue engineering;● Advanced fabrication and surface modification strategies to improve biocompatibility, targeting efficiency, and tissue integration;● In vitro and in vivo investigations evaluating safety, biodistribution, therapeutic efficacy, diagnostic performance, and tissue repair outcomes;● Mechanistic insights into biomaterial–biointerface interactions and disease or healing microenvironment-responsive behavior; Topic editors: Bing Guo, Xinyuan Yuan, Teliang Lu Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77874/advanced-biomaterials-for-musculoskeletal-disease-diagnosis-treatment-and-repair