A compound which is particularly challenging to formulate-in form of hydrogels or otherwise-is curcumin (CUR). A plethora of preclinical studies pointed out the antioxidative, [40] cardioprotective, [41] or antitumor [42] activities of the "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS; evaluated by United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)) [43] compound. Despite a large number of clinical trials, it has not been approved as drug for human use. Besides potentially troublesome evaluation of preclinical data, [44-47] this is most likely associated with the extremely low water solubility of 0.6 mg L −1 (1.6 µm) [48] of CUR as well as the molecules' high susceptibility to degradation, not only in water, [49,50] but also to biomedical transformations such as carbon chain cleavage, reduction, conjugation with glucuronic acid or sulfate in biological media in vitro [51] and in vivo. [52] These issues make CUR an interesting model compound to challenge hydrogels with respect to their desired application as injectable drug depot. Previously, poly(2-oxazoline) (POx) and poly(2-oxazine) (POzi)-based drug-delivery vehicles with interesting structureproperty relationships with respect to drug loading and potential for parenteral administration of CUR were reported. [53-58] The loading capacities (LCs) for CUR in ABA triblock-copolymers comprising the same hydrophilic poly(2-methyl-2-oxazoline) (PMeOx) corona (= A) and either poly(2-n-butyl-2-oxazoline) (PBuOx) (= A-BuOx-A) or (poly(2-n-propyl-2-oxazine) (PPrOzi) (= A-PrOzi-A) as hydrophobic blocks ranged from 21.6 wt% to 54.5 wt%. [53] Although benefits with respect to therapeutic efficacy of intravenously administered, ultra-high loaded A-BuOx-A/ paclitaxel formulations (LC = 45 wt%) and combination formulations of hydrophobic cis-platin prodrug and etoposide or PTX have been observed in vivo, [59-63] this might not be true for CUR due to its susceptibility to degradation or toxicity at high concentrations (not achievable orally). Inspired by CUR-loaded hydrogels for cutaneous wound repair [28] or intranasal drug delivery to the brain, [64] we wondered, if we could incorporate CUR in a recently reported, cytocompatible PMeOx-b-PPrOzi copolymerbased hydrogel, [65] for subcutaneous or intratumoral injection in order to avoid systemic circulation and/or allow prolonged release. From a more fundamental and practical point of view, it was also interesting to investigate the influence of hydrophobic CUR on the viscoelastic properties of a hydrogel that is formed based on dynamic hydrophobic interactions. Furthermore, the effect of nanoformulated CUR incorporated into the hydrogel matrix is of interest. Although drug-loaded poly mer micelles incorporated into hydrogel matrices are readily found in the literature, [17,28,29,66] such systematic investigations of the viscoelastic properties of hydrogels containing nanoformulated hydrophobic drugs are rare. In addition, to assess the potential as an injectable thermogelling drug depot, the CUR-loaded hydrogels were injected into a collag...