Polyrotaxanes as emerging biomaterials for tissue engineering applications: a brief review

Abstract

The field of tissue engineering and regeneration constantly explores the possibility of utilizing various biomaterials' properties to achieve effective and uneventful tissue repairs. Polyrotaxanes (PRXs) are supramolecular assemblies, which possess interesting mechanical property at a molecular scale termed as molecular mobility. This molecular mobility could be utilized to stimulate various cellular mechanosignaling elements, thereby altering the cellular functions. Apart from this, the versatile nature of PRXs such as the ability to form complex with growth factors and peptides, numerous sites for chemical modifications, and processability into different forms makes them interesting candidates for applications towards tissue engineering. This literature briefly reviews the concepts of PRXs and molecular mobility, the versatile nature of PRXs, and its emerging utility towards certain tissue engineering applications.

Fig. 1

One of the schematic of synthesis of the PRX supramolecular assembly. The long axle polymers (blue) are threaded into the ring-shaped molecules (orange) to form the pseudo PRX molecules. Then, end cap molecules (purple) are added to prevent the dethreading of ring molecules, thereby resulting in PRXs. This PRX can be further modified at various sites (green, red, cyan) to impart desirable functionalities according to the application