Dear Colleagues,

Over the past two decades, the interdisciplinary field of biomaterials and tissue engineering has experienced dynamic and rapid growth. Polymeric biomaterials possess many advantages due to their unique tailorability of chemical structures and physical properties, biodegradability, and the feasibility of fabricating them into medical devices for applications including tissue replacement, drug delivery, cancer therapy, and nonviral gene therapy. Based on the principles of polymer science and engineering, numerous strategies have been applied to develop biomaterials with controllable physical properties to satisfy diverse clinical needs by tuning their structural parameters and morphologies at different length scales. Polymeric biomaterials can be incorporated with natural materials and inorganic nanoparticles to achieve novel, unique properties and better performance. Biomimetic and intelligent polymeric systems have also been investigated to advance our material design strategies. Through controllable polymer properties, cell–material interactions such as cell adhesion, proliferation, migration, and differentiation can be modulated. Vesicles formed by amphiphilic polymers can be used as carriers for delivering drugs to desired targets. Polymer scaffolds with predesigned geometries and nanometer-scale or micron-scale structural parameters can be fabricated for diverse tissue engineering applications.

The aim of this Special Issue is to examine the synergy between material design strategies and biological evaluations through new and significant contributions from active researchers in the field. We invite authors to present original research articles that will stimulate the continuing efforts in developing novel polymeric systems for improving our fundamental understanding of cell/tissue–material interactions and biomedical applications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Design, synthesis, and physicochemical characterization of novel polymeric biomaterials;
• Cell/tissue–material interactions and biological evaluations of novel polymeric biomaterials;
• Fabrication of surface patterns and scaffolds using polymeric biomaterials;
• Novel polymeric systems and self-assembled structures for drug delivery;
• Theoretical modeling of polymeric biomaterials and related biological functions.

Prof. Dr. Shanfeng Wang
Prof. Dr. Lichun Lu
Prof. Dr. Michael J. Yaszemski
Guest Editors

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• polymeric biomaterials
• tissue engineering
• nanomedicine
• scaffolding
• biomedical devices