Abstract:

Human soft tissue generally refers to the sum of all connective tissues in the body excluding bones and joints, including skin, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, etc., and is the most widely distributed and largest proportion of tissues in the human body. Soft tissues are soft and elastic, which closely connect various tissues and organs, and play a crucial role in supporting, protecting, and maintaining the normal physiological functions of human body. However, large-area and large-volume soft tissue injuries caused by accidents, diseases, and surgery significantly affect health and quality of life of patients, and remain one of the significant challenges in clinical medicine. Due to its effective performance of repairing damaged tissues, autologous transplantation has been regarded as the gold standard in clinical applications for many years, while it faces the disadvantages of limited donor sources and secondary trauma. Therefore, it is urgent to develop novel bioactive materials with suitable compositions/structures and excellent performance to promote soft tissue regeneration.

Since the bioactive glass, the first-generation inorganic biomaterials, with excellent biocompatibility and tissue integration functions invented by Prof. Larry Hench from the United States in 1969, the research curtain of bioactive inorganic materials has been opened, receiving widespread attention from material scientists and medical doctors, and entering a fast track of rapid development. Inorganic biomaterials possess highly controllable chemical compositions and macro/nano topographical structures, offering unique advantages in regulating cell differentiation and inducing tissue regeneration. Over the past decades, researches have mainly focused on the effects of inorganic biomaterials on regulating the differentiation behaviors of bone-related cells and hard tissue regeneration including bone and teeth, effectively addressing several clinical problems. Interestingly, recent studies demonstrate that inorganic biomaterials also have the capacity to regulate the bioactivity and specific differentiation of various soft tissue-related cells, including vascular endothelial cells, nerve cells, hair follicle stem cells, etc. These studies preliminarily confirm the potential application of inorganic biomaterials in repairing soft tissue injuries, greatly expanding the application scope of inorganic biomaterials.

In recent years, our group has performed numerous studies on the application of bioactive inorganic materials for soft tissue regeneration, and achieved some representative results. To showcase the latest research progress of Chinese research teams in the application of inorganic biomaterials to soft tissues regeneration including skin, nerves, myocardium, etc., and attract more researchers to participate in the basic research and clinical translation of inorganic biomaterials, Prof. Chang Jiang and I are invited by the editorial office of Journal of Inorganic Materials to serve as guest editors for a special issue on the theme of "Inorganic Biomaterials for Soft Tissue Regeneration". This special issue includes review articles on the latest researches from well-known teams, including Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Sichuan University, Shanghai Normal University, etc., covering many interesting aspects such as vascularized skin regeneration, hair follicle regeneration, innervated tissue regeneration, myocardial regeneration, and organoid development.

We hope that this special issue can help researchers gain a deeper understanding of the latest developments and broad application prospects of inorganic biomaterials in the field of soft tissue regeneration, and promote close collaboration among researchers from various fields and disciplines to jointly advance the development of inorganic biomaterial science. We expect that more innovative inorganic bioactive materials will emerge to solve numerous clinical problems related to soft tissue regeneration in the future, ensuring human life safety and health.