Aug 2026· Frontiers in Soft Matter· Vol 6· 0 citations· 74 references
TL;DR
An overview of recent advances in stimuli-responsive hydrogels is provided and current challenges related to scalability, biocompatibility, regulatory approval, and commercialization are discussed, along with future perspectives on translating smart and self-healing hydrogel technologies into practical applications in food, biomedical, and tissue engineering.
Abstract
Stimuli-responsive hydrogels are hydrophilic, three-dimensional polymer network structures that dynamically adjust their properties in response to changes in their external environment, such as temperature, pH, light, electric and magnetic fields, and enzymes. The ease of tuning their physicochemical properties and network architecture gives them an advantage over conventional hydrogels in various applications. This review provides an overview of recent advances in stimuli-responsive hydrogels and critically discusses developments in tissue engineering, food technology, wound healing, controlled drug delivery, and regenerative medicine. Representative examples demonstrate how responsive hydrogel systems can improve cell delivery, tissue regeneration, active food packaging, targeted nutrient release, and infection control. In addition, we also cover a section on the role of neutron scattering techniques, including small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), neutron reflectivity (NR), and quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS), in elucidating the network structure of hydrogels, interfacial properties, and molecular dynamics across multiple length and time scales. Finally, current challenges related to scalability, biocompatibility, regulatory approval, and commercialization are discussed, along with future perspectives on translating smart and self-healing hydrogel technologies into practical applications in food, biomedical, and tissue engineering.
Hydrogels are highly hydrated three-dimensional polymeric network materials that have attracted considerable attention in medical and biomedical fields owing to their favorable chemical modifiability, physical tunability, biocompatibility, and capacity to mimic key features of native extracellular matrices. With advances in polymer chemistry, crosslinking strategies, stimuli-responsive design, and emerging fabrication technologies, hydrogels have evolved from simple soft materials into multifunctional biomedical systems capable of integrating controlled delivery, tissue support, microenvironmental regulation, biosensing, and disease modeling. These properties make hydrogels particularly relevant for addressing a broad spectrum of human diseases in which conventional therapeutic strategies are often limited by insufficient targeting efficiency, limited therapeutic windows, pronounced systemic side effects, and inadequate restoration of damaged tissue structure and function. In this review, we systematically summarize the design principles and material engineering strategies of hydrogels, including structural construction approaches and functional regulation concepts. We then provide a comprehensive overview of their current biomedical applications, encompassing drug delivery systems, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, biosensing and diagnostic platforms, as well as cell culture and organoid systems. Building on this foundation, we place particular emphasis on recent progress in hydrogel-based therapeutic strategies across diverse human disease contexts, including wound healing, musculoskeletal system repair, cancer, neurological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune disorders, and reproductive system diseases. Finally, we discuss the developmental potential of hydrogels in biomedicine and present an integrated perspective on their clinical translation prospects, with the aim of offering references and insights for the further application of hydrogel materials in future human disease treatment.
Hydrogels are crosslinked three-dimensional polymer network materials with hydrophilic structures that can absorb and retain large amounts of water and/or biological fluids without dissolving, owing to the physical and chemical nature of their crosslinks. They play significant roles in various industrial and environmental applications. In many applications, natural hydrogels have gradually been replaced by synthetic hydrogels because of their superior water absorption capacity, longer lifetime, and diverse sources of raw chemical materials. The main functions of hydrogels are important and diverse, including high water absorption and retention, controlled drug delivery, biocompatibility, soft-tissue-mimicking behavior, swelling and deswelling ability, selective permeability, mechanical support, and environmental remediation. Hydrogels are commonly classified according to their origin, composition, crosslinking type, responsiveness, and structure. They have different applications, particularly in biomedical and healthcare fields, hygiene and personal care products, industrial and engineering applications, agriculture, environmental remediation, and nanotechnology. The literature on hydrogels has expanded considerably, especially in scientific research fields. Therefore, this review examines various publications and technical reports focusing on hydrogel products from an engineering perspective to summarize the technological dimensions of this rapidly advancing multidisciplinary research field. This review aims to summarize and evaluate the preparation, classification, and recent applications of hydrogels, emphasizing their transition from simple water absorbing materials to tailored smart systems. It also highlights the relationship between structural design and functional performance in different sectors, such as drug delivery, wound healing, oil-water separation, and agricultural water management. Finally, the review addresses current challenges and proposes future research directions to improve hydrogel stability, responsiveness, and biocompatibility.
Ahmed Al-Ani, H. Ahmed, Khalid Zainulabdeen et al.· Journal of university of Anb...· 0 citations
Stimulus-responsive cellulose-based hydrogels combine the advantages of being widely sourced, renewable, biocompatible, and biodegradable. With their three-dimensional porous networks and high water content, they provide an ideal environment for drug loading, diffusion, and cell growth. Through chemical modification, physical crosslinking, chemical crosslinking, or composite network design, cellulose-based hydrogels can respond to pH, temperature, light, and multi-stimuli, and achieve controlled drug release by adjusting network pore size, swelling behavior, crosslinking density, or degradation rate. This review summarizes the structural characteristics of cellulose and its derivatives, the main preparation methods of cellulose-based hydrogels, their stimulus-responsive mechanisms, and recent advances in their application for drug delivery. It focuses on their potential applications in anticancer drug delivery, wound dressings and antimicrobial delivery, ophthalmic drug delivery, oral-intestinal drug delivery, as well as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Finally, this paper summarizes the challenges facing these materials in terms of mechanical properties, release behavior stability, in vivo compatibility, and large-scale application, and outlines future directions for their development.
Wenyu Luo· Theoretical and Natural Scie...· 0 citations
Hydrogels are three-dimensional hydrophilic polymeric networks known for their high water absorption capacity, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and resemblance to the natural extracellular matrix, making them highly valuable in pharmaceutical and biomedical applications. Recent advances in polymer science, nanotechnology, and bioengineering have led to the development of smart, injectable, self-healing, and nanocomposite hydrogels with improved mechanical strength and stimuli-responsive behavior. These advanced hydrogel systems have shown significant potential in controlled drug delivery, wound healing, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, cancer therapy, and ophthalmic applications. Emerging fabrication technologies such as 3D/4D bioprinting, microfluidics, and electrospinning have further enhanced the design and functionality of hydrogel-based systems. Despite promising progress, challenges related to scalability, long-term stability, sterilization, and clinical translation still remain. This review highlights recent advances in hydrogel synthesis, characterization, biomedical applications, clinical developments, and future perspectives, emphasizing the growing importance of hydrogels as next-generation biomaterials in modern healthcare.
Sachin, Virendra kumar Maurya, Kamalesh Kumar· GLOBAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUT...· 0 citations
Population aging and the rising burden of trauma and chronic disease have increased the demands placed on biomedical hydrogels. In addition to biocompatibility, these materials are expected to provide mechanical support, processability, and environmental responsiveness. A single crosslinked network rarely balances all of these requirements. Dual-crosslinked networks, which combine reversible physical interactions with stable chemical bonds, have therefore received increasing attention. This review examines the network-forming mechanisms of dual-crosslinked hydrogels, with emphasis on how crosslinking density, degree of oxidation, and energy-dissipation structures affect mechanical behavior. Strategies for pH-, temperature-, light-, and redox-responsive functions and the corresponding characterization methods are also summarized. Available studies indicate that a suitable combination of two crosslinking mechanisms can improve strength, toughness, and tissue adhesion while retaining injectability, self-healing, and stimulus responsiveness to varying degrees. We further discuss translational barriers, including degradation-rate matching, coupling among performance parameters, and scale-up. This review is intended to support the structural design of hydrogels for tissue regeneration, drug delivery, and flexible bioelectronics.
Xun-Wei Gan, Lian-Yong Wang· International Journal of Bio...· 0 citations
Smart stimuli-responsive injectable hydrogels are new generation of drug delivery systems that promise to revolutionize the field of drug delivery by combining the benefits of minimally invasive drug delivery systems with spatial and temporal control over drug release. This report aims to summarize the recent advances in the design of stimuli-responsive injectable hydrogels, including the polymer backbone, such as polysaccharide-derived hyaluronic acid, and synthetic poly(NIPAM), poly(PEG), and poly(zwitterionic)s, as well as the various cross-linking chemistries, including Schiff base, Michael addition, and physical cross-linking, that enable the design of injectable hydrogels that undergo a solution-to-gel transition in situ in response to various stimuli, such as pH, redox, enzymes, light, ultrasound, and temperature, among others. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of the current advances, mechanisms, and perspectives of smart stimuli-responsive injectable hydrogels, including their applications in oncology, ophthalmology, and neurology, as well as their successful outcomes in completely curing tumours, 75% tumour regression using a GSH-responsive peptide gel, and significant functional repair in spinal cord injury repairs using microenvironment-responsive matrices, among many other applications of injectable hydrogels in drug delivery systems. The translation of injectable hydrogels into the clinic, however, is currently hampered by the difficulties in long-term biocompatibility profiling, large-scale sterile production, and regulatory hurdles associated with combination drug products
Sedhu Raagavan Sarkgunan, Benjamin Jeganathan, Rajesh Sathiyamoorthy et al.· Current Pharmaceutical Resea...· 0 citations
