Recent Advances in Bioinspired Hydrogels with Environment‐Responsive Characteristics for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

The development of hydrogel‐integrated soft materials via the incorporation of therapeutic medicines into biocompatible hydrogels, serving as host, will significantly contribute to advances in medical diagnosis and treatment. Furthermore, intelligent hydrogels having the ability to respond to local environmental conditions offer a promising approach for the development of novel solutions in the biomedical field. Bioinspired intelligent hydrogels are now becoming a potentially powerful biomaterial class for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and medical device. Recent advances include bioinspired intelligent hydrogels that possess unique mechanical and optical properties as a result of their nature‐inspired complex‐structured design. This review highlights the latest advances in intelligent bionic hydrogels, as well as strategies targeting smart response of their characteristics across multiple dimensions (such as temperature, light, pH, among others). Finally, the potential development and prospective application of mimicking the natural intelligence of multifunctional medical hydrogels are also discussed.

Macrostructure and Microenvironment Biomimetic Hydrogel: Design, Properties, and Tissue Engineering Application

“…Building upon both macro and micro simulations, researchers draw inspiration from nature’s organisms to craft biofunction-inspired hydrogels for many specific applications. The diversity of functions exhibited by natural organisms serves as a wellspring of creativity . Human body tissues, including muscles, cartilage, and tendons, showcase unique structures, specialized functions, and exceptional properties.…”

“…The diversity of functions exhibited by natural organisms serves as a wellspring of creativity. 194 Human body tissues, including muscles, cartilage, and tendons, showcase unique structures, specialized functions, and exceptional properties. To illustrate, articular cartilage hosts a rich synovial fluid, diminishing friction between bones, while its basal layer manifests remarkable resilience through intricate network interactions that absorb high impact forces.…”

Polymeric Gel Systems Cytotoxicity and Drug Release as Key Features for their Effective Application in Various Fields of Addressed Pharmaceuticals Delivery

“…Hydrogels are three-dimensional cross-linked polymer networks capable of adsorbing large volumes of water (the degree of swelling reaches several thousand percent) and imitating human tissues [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Hydrogels 20–30 nm in size (“nanogels”) are capable of incorporating hydrophobic drugs into the core and delivering them to their destination, providing their prolonged release.…”

Femtosecond laser direct writing of functional stimulus-responsive structures and applications

“…Under the background of continuous deepening of fundamental research and growing need for intelligent applications, versatile artificial structures with intelligent response capabilities have aroused extensive attention. In the last few years, the most promising stimuli-responsive structures with multiple customized functions have been made from shape memory polymers (SMPs) [20,21], liquid crystal (LC) polymeric materials [22,23], hydrogels [24,25], and tailored composite materials [26], among others. Furthermore, various manufacturing methods have been devised to prepare these intelligent structures with favorable characteristics of fast responses to external stimuli, such as fused deposition modeling, stereolithography, direct ink writing, digital light processing, electrospinning, and selective laser sintering [22,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35].…”