Thermogelling materials and their important role in biomedical engineering applications

Thermogelling materials describe a group of materials which undergo a sol to gel transformation in response to temperature. This can occur either by surpassing a lower critical solution temperature, or via micellization and micelle aggregation. Both natural and synthetic polymers can serve as thermogelling materials and their use in biomaterials and biomedical appli-cations is widespread. From their beginnings as a substrate for cell sheet engineering, thermogels have been utilized as injectable materials for tissue engineering, drug delivery plat-forms, cell culture, and most recently in 3D printing. This pro-spective examines some of the recent reports of advances in the field of thermogelling materials and offers an outlook on the important role these materials will continue to play in the future of biomedical engineering.