Biomedical materials articles from across Nature Portfolio

Confining the Zika virus within a self-adjuvanting hydrogel that forms a subcutaneous inflammatory niche stimulates strong immune responses in mice without inducing infection.

Cancer nanotherapy suffers from low-yield delivery that is imposed by tumour pathophysiological barriers. Top-down drug delivery strategies, including exosomes and cell membrane-coated particles, can improve safety and efficacy owing to the innate biointerfacial properties of these platforms. Here, we discuss the technological challenges that need to be overcome for their clinical implementation.

Peptides are small yet versatile building blocks of biomaterials. This Comment highlights recent progress in the design of liquid-like microdroplets, or coacervates, based on peptides and produced through liquid–liquid phase separation. This emerging platform holds promise as efficacious delivery vehicles for multi-purpose biomedical applications.

Inflamed heart tissue after myocardial infarction can be repaired via an intravascularly infusible degradable matrix that binds to leaky vasculature.

An embedded 3D printing technique — which uses an alginate–polyacrylamide hydrogel supporting matrix and a conductive silver–hydrogel ink — can be used to fabricate hydrogel electronic devices containing various different embedded circuits.