Bio-responsive smart polymers and biomedical applications

Bio-responsive polymers are the foundation for the construction of the smart systems that exhibit designed biomedical functions after receiving specific stimuli such as biological signals and pathological abnormalities. These stimulus-responsive systems have shown great promise of developing novel products in precision medicine, and relevant research has grown intensively in recent years. This review aims to outline the basic knowledge and recent progress in the advanced bio-responsive systems as well as the major challenges. The current bio-responsive systems mainly rely on physical, chemical and biological cues, and this review focuses on the strategies of molecular design for the incorporation of appropriate responsive building blocks. The potential applications, including controlled drug delivery, diagnostics and tissue regeneration, are introduced and promising research directions that benefit the medical translation and commercialization are also discussed.