Designing Hydrogels for Immunomodulation in Cancer Therapy and Regenerative Medicine

Abstract

The immune system not only acts as a defense against pathogen and cancer cells, but also plays an important role in homeostasis and tissue regeneration. Targeting immune systems is a promising strategy for efficient cancer treatment and regenerative medicine. Current systemic immunomodulation therapies are usually associated with low persistence time, poor targeting to action sites and severe side effects. Due to their ECM‐mimetic nature, tunable properties and diverse bioactivities, hydrogels are intriguing platforms to locally deliver immunomodulatory agents and cells, as well as provide an immunomodulatory microenvironment to recruit, activate and expand host immune cells. In this review, we focus on the design considerations, including polymer backbones, crosslinking mechanisms, physicochemical nature, and immunomodulation‐related components, of the hydrogel platforms. The immunomodulatory effects and therapeutic outcomes in cancer therapy and tissue regeneration of different hydrogel systems are emphasized, including hydrogel depots for delivery of immunomodulatory agents, hydrogel scaffolds for cell delivery, and immunomodulatory hydrogels depending on the intrinsic properties of materials. Finally, the remained challenges in current systems and future development of immunomodulatory hydrogels are discussed.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Beyond Traditional Medicine: EVs-Loaded Hydrogels as a Game Changer in Disease Therapeutics

“…The most often used hydrogel materials for EVs delivery include calcium alginate (Ca-Alg) [ 53 , 56 ], arginine-glycine-aspartate (RGD) [ 57 , 58 , 59 ], hyaluronic acid (HA) [ 55 , 60 , 61 , 62 ], chitosan (CS) [ 54 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ], and gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) [ 34 , 52 , 67 , 68 ]. The synthesis of the hydrogel has been well documented in many reviews [ 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 ], and is not described in the current work.…”

Applications of self-assembled peptide hydrogels in anti-tumor therapy

“… 104 Peptide hydrogels' regulatory and diverse biological properties enable them to transport immunomodulatory factors and cells to targeted areas and recruit endogenous immune cells with fewer side effects. 105 …”

Wound microenvironment regulatory poly(l-glutamic acid) composite hydrogels containing metal ion-coordinated nanoparticles for effective hemostasis and wound healing

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