Regenerative medicine aims to restore the function of diseased or damaged tissues and organs by cell therapy, gene therapy, and tissue engineering, along with the adjunctive application of bioactive molecules. Traditional bioactive molecules such as growth factors and cytokines have shown great potential in regulation of cellular and tissue behavior, but have the disadvantages of limited source, high cost, short half-life and side effects. In recent years, herbal compounds extracted from natural plants/herbs have gained increasing attention. This is not only because herbal compounds are easily obtained, inexpensive, mostly safe and reliable, but also owing to their excellent effects including anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antioxidative, proangiogenic behavior and abilty to promote stem cell differentiation. Such effects also play important roles in the processes related to tissue regeneration. Furthermore, the moieties of the herbal compounds can form physical or chemical bonds with the scaffolds, which contributes to improved mechanical strength and stability of the scaffolds. Thus, the incorporation of herbal compounds as bioactive molecules in biomaterials is a promising direction for future regenerative medicine applications. Herein, an overview on the use of bioactive herbal compounds combined with different biomaterial scaffolds for regenerative medicine application is presented. We firstly introduce the classification, structures and properties of different herbal bioactive components and then provide a comprehensive survey on the use of bioactive herbal compounds to engineer scaffolds for tissue repir/regeneration of skin, cartilage, bone, neural, and heart tissues. Finally, we highlight the challenges and prospects for the future development of herbal scaffolds towards clinical translation. Overall, it is believed that the combination of bioactive herbal compounds with biomaterials could be a promising perspective for next generation of regenerative medicine.
