Challenges for the use of hydrogels in medicine

Hydrogels can be useful in medicine but they present many challenges. On is that their structure is homogeneous and therefore does not represent fully the extracellular matrix[@foyt2018Exploiting Advanced Hydrogel Technologies to Address Key Challenges in Regenerative Medicine].

One big difference is the inclusion of adhesion motives within the ECM, which means that human-made hydrogels need to incorporate adhesive motifs to allow attachment and mediate cell viability[@foyt2018Exploiting Advanced Hydrogel Technologies to Address Key Challenges in Regenerative Medicine].