Smart Hydrogel for the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis

TL;DR

This paper reviews smart hydrogels as a potential advanced treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, focusing on their design and challenges in clinical translation.

Contribution

The paper provides a systematic review of preparation strategies and stimulus-responsive mechanisms of smart hydrogels for rheumatoid arthritis treatment.

Findings

Smart hydrogels offer targeted and controlled drug delivery in the inflamed joint microenvironment.

Temperature-responsive and multi-responsive hydrogels are most frequently studied for localized therapy.

Clinical translation is hindered by biocompatibility, standardization, and manufacturing challenges.

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that imposes substantial physical, emotional, and socioeconomic burdens on patients. Conventional therapeutic approaches are often limited by systemic toxicity, inadequate joint targeting, and variable patient responses, highlighting the urgent need for advanced drug delivery systems. Smart hydrogels have emerged as a promising platform for RA treatment due to their unique three-dimensional hydrophilic networks, excellent biocompatibility, and tunable physicochemical properties. This review systematically summarizes the preparation strategies and design principles of smart hydrogels, with an emphasis on chemically and physically crosslinked networks as well as composite systems. It further outlines the major stimulus-responsive release mechanisms—including temperature, pH, reactive oxygen species (ROS), light, and enzyme triggers—that enable targeted and controlled drug delivery within the inflamed joint microenvironment. Among the various types discussed, temperature-responsive and multi-responsive hydrogels are most frequently investigated for their potential to achieve localized, on-demand therapy. Despite considerable preclinical progress, the clinical translation of smart hydrogels faces critical challenges, including insufficient long-term biocompatibility data, lack of standardized evaluation protocols, and difficulties in scalable manufacturing. This review aims to provide a conceptual framework for the rational design of smart hydrogels and to stimulate interdisciplinary efforts toward overcoming existing translational barriers in RA treatment.

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