Research progress in the application of in situ hydrogel system in tumor treatment

Abstract

The in situ hydrogel drug delivery system is a hot research topic in recent years. Combining both properties of hydrogel and solution, in situ hydrogels can provide many advantages for drug delivery application, including easy application, high local drug concentration, prolonged drug retention time, reduced drug dose in vivo, good biocompatibility and improved patient compliance, thus has potential in tumor treatment. In this paper, the related literature reports in recent years were reviewed to summarize and discuss the research progress and development prospects in the application of in situ hydrogels in tumor treatment. ARTICLE HISTORY

Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogels for Cancer Treatment: The Role of pH, Light, Ionic Strength and Magnetic Field

“…Additionally, hydrogel-based formulations have been approved and used in the clinical practice for a variety of diseases. This includes Perseris ® a risperidone hydrogel for acute and chronic schizophrenia, Sublocad ® for buprenorphine induced analgesia, and Azasite ® with lidocaine hydrochloric acid for the treatment of bacterial conjunctivitis [ 11 ].…”

“…In this context, the use of hydrogels, and especially stimuli-responsive hydrogels, has been proposed for in situ application at the tumor site/cavity, promoting a local sustained release of the drugs and a reduction of systemic exposure and off-target effects [ 12 ]. Moreover, administration of depot systems reduces the needs for repeated anticancer therapy cycles and the associated drawbacks to the patients and the economic impact in the health care systems [ 11 ].…”

“…Over the years several hydrogel-based formulations have been designed for cancer diagnosis, prevention, and treatment, some of them enrolling clinical trials. Moreover, some have been granted with FDA and/or European Medicines Agency (EMA) approval, being translated into the clinical practice such as Lupron ® depot or Eligard ® , two poly lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA)-based hydrogels for in situ delivery of leuprolide acetate against advanced prostate cancer [ 11 ]. Another example is TraceIT ® , a polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrogel microparticles containing covalently bound iodine, approved as tissue marker.…”

Injectable hydrogels for anti‐tumour treatment: a review

“…Anti‐tumour synergistic therapy refers to integrating multiple anti‐tumour methods into a system to further improve the anti‐tumour efficiency [125]. The currently reported synergy of multiple anti‐tumour mechanisms included photothermal + magnetocaloric anti‐tumour, thermal + ROS anti‐tumour, thermal + immune anti‐tumour, ROS + immune anti‐tumour, and thermal + ROS + immune anti‐tumour, and so on.…”

Antitumor Effects of Self-Assembling Peptide-Emodin in situ Hydrogels in vitro and in vivo

“…[22][23][24][25][26][27] Hydrogels are in an injectable solution, suspension or semi-solid state before administration and semi-solid or solid hydrogels can immediately form in situ at the site of drug administration through phase transition stimulated by external conditions (light, temperature, pH, etc.). [28][29][30][31] After the direct injection of the drug-loaded colloidal suspensions or solutions at the tumor site, the hydrogels can form in situ, and the drug loaded in the hydrogels can be mainly concentrated in the tumor tissue with improved therapeutic effects on tumors and reduced toxic effects of drugs on normal organs. [32][33][34][35][36][37][38] Ionic complementary self-assembling peptides are structurally composed by alternately arranging positively and negatively charged amino acids with hydrophobic amino acids and can spontaneously assemble under the action of electrostatic forces and hydrophobic interactions.…”