Advanced drug delivery systems for regenerative medicine: nanobiomaterial innovations, hybrid platforms, and translational perspectives

Regenerative therapies focus on repairing, reproducing, or regenerating tissues and organs that have been harmed due to injury or illness through cellular based therapy and bioactive molecule driven systems. The advancement of this type of therapy has become increasingly dependent on progressive developments in drug delivery systems that provide controlled and sustained delivery of therapeutic agents and modulated the cellular behaviors in the target site. Nanocarriers (liposomes, extracellular vesicles, etc.) increase the biocompatibility of the drug delivery system and aid in the targeted delivery of growth factors and genetic materials. Additionally, advanced biomaterials (hydrogels, bioresorbable polymers) serve as drug delivery vehicle for the regeneration of the tissues while acting as structural scaffold to create a regenerative microenvironment. New technologies (3D cell printing, micro-fluidic systems) provide excellent ability to precisely control the spatial deployment of therapeutic agents thereby enhancing local tissue regeneration and angiogenesis. While many of these modalities have demonstrated success in preclinical studies, there are still many challenges constraining the large-scale manufacture, standardization and regulatory approval for translation into the clinic. Therefore, there is a critical need for multidisciplinary collaborative efforts to further develop scalable and effective personalized regenerative therapies to treat patients with regenerative medicine. This review proposes a hierarchical framework integrating nano-scale carriers, biomaterial platforms, and therapeutic applications, offering a unified perspective that bridges material innovation with clinical translation in regenerative medicine.