Volume 4 Issue 2, February 2019

Ingestible electronics can be used as clinical tools for diagnosis and therapy. In this Review, the authors discuss clinical applications of ingestible electronic devices and highlight materials and sensor technologies, drug delivery applications and major challenges and opportunities for clinical translation, such as safety, powering and communication.

Man-made fibrillar hydrogels mimic the structure of filamentous extracellular matrices and can be used as biomaterials for 3D cell culture and tissue engineering. In this Review, the authors discuss the design and properties of fibrillar hydrogels and explore different building blocks, assembly mechanisms, properties and applications.

Shape-memory materials can generate programmable movements triggered by an external stimulus, such as an environmental change. In this Review, the authors discuss mechanisms, fabrication schemes, characterization methods and applications of the one-way shape-memory effect enabling shape recovery and of reversible shape-memory effects exhibiting actuation behaviour.

Mucus is a 3D hydrogel composed of mucins that houses the human microbiome. Mucus guides microbial cell fate and is involved in the suppression of pathogenic bacteria. In this Review, the authors discuss the design of synthetic mucins for the investigation of mucus–microbiome interactions and for applications in 3D in vitro cell culture.