Healthcare‐acquired infections as well as increasing antimicrobial resistance have become an urgent global challenge, thus smart alternative solutions are needed to tackle bacterial infections. Antibacterial materials in biomedical applications and hospital hygiene have attracted great interest, in particular, the emergence of surface design strategies offer an effective alternative to antibiotics, thereby preventing the possible development of bacterial resistance. In this review, recent progress on advanced surface modifications to prevent bacterial infections are addressed comprehensively, starting with the key factors against bacterial adhesion, followed by varying strategies that can inhibit biofilm formation effectively. Furthermore, “super antibacterial systems” through pre‐treatment defense and targeted bactericidal system, are proposed with increasing evidence of clinical potential. Finally, the advantages and future challenges of surface strategies to resist healthcare‐associated infections are discussed, with promising prospects of developing novel antimicrobial materials.

Polymer axial drawing enables the design of optimal microarchitectured scaffolds for tendon regeneration.

The spatial-temporal synchronization of photothermal therapy and chemotherapy is highly desirable for an efficient cancer treatment with synergistic effect. Herein, we developed a chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin (DOX) and photothermal conjugated polymer (CP) co-loaded nanoplatform using a near-infrared (NIR) laser responsive amphiphilic brush copolymer as the encapsulation matrix. The obtained nanoparticles (NPs) exhibit good monodispersity and excellent stability, which can efficiently convert laser energy into thermal energy for photothermal therapy. Moreover, the hydrophobic polymer matrix bearing a number of 2-diazo-1,2-naphthoquinones (DNQ) moieties could be transformed to a hydrophilic one upon NIR two-photon laser irradiation, which leads to fast drug release. Furthermore, the surface modification of the NPs with cyclic arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (cRGD) tripeptide significantly enhances the accumulation of the NPs within integrin α_vβ₃ overexpressed cancer cells. The half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) of the combination therapy is 13.7 μg mL⁻¹, while the IC₅₀ for chemotherapy and photothermal therapy alone is 147.8 μg mL⁻¹ and 36.2 μg mL⁻¹, respectively. The combination index (C.I.) is 0.48 (<1), which indicates the synergistic effect for chemotherapy and PTT. These findings provide an excellent NIR laser regulated nanoplatform for combined cancer treatment with synergistic effect due to the synchronous chemo- and photo-thermal therapy.

Bio-responsive polymers are the foundation for the construction of the smart systems that exhibit designed biomedical functions after receiving specific stimuli such as biological signals and pathological abnormalities. These stimulus-responsive systems have shown great promise of developing novel products in precision medicine, and relevant research has grown intensively in recent years. This review aims to outline the basic knowledge and recent progress in the advanced bio-responsive systems as well as the major challenges. The current bio-responsive systems mainly rely on physical, chemical and biological cues, and this review focuses on the strategies of molecular design for the incorporation of appropriate responsive building blocks. The potential applications, including controlled drug delivery, diagnostics and tissue regeneration, are introduced and promising research directions that benefit the medical translation and commercialization are also discussed.