Hydrogels: the future of wound care

Bandages have been used for wound care for at least 4,000 years. Though medical technology has improved dramatically from the earliest applications of honey and linen, bandages today are still passive coverings that can be combined with topical antibiotics. However, that’s starting to change with research into hydrogels.

Hydrogels are flexible materials that can be designed with “smart” properties that can respond to wound conditions or environmental changes to promote healing. An overview of these stimuli-responsive hydrogels and their potential to change wound healing are presented in Zhang et al.

“We believe that in the near future, stimuli-responsive hydrogel dressings will be used in a wide range of clinical treatments to achieve efficient and high-quality wound healing,” said author Limei Cai.

The review covers the past five years of advances in stimuli-responsive hydrogels and their applications to variable exogeneous environments and biochemical microenvironments. The reviews also outlines hydrogels as drug carriers, evaluates the market status of hydrogels, and presents a outlook on future research challenges and developments.

“What is most exciting in this field is that different stimuli-responsive hydrogel dressings will be applied to different types of wound healing in the future, allowing clinicians to choose the right hydrogel for different patients based on the state and nature of their wounds,” Cai said.

The authors hope that the review will be used both by researchers to advance future studies of hydrogel dressings, as well as by clinicians and patients who can apply the latest advances in hydrogel dressings to wound treatment.

Source: “Stimuli-responsive hydrogel dressing for wound healing,” by Wei Zhang, Jun Hu, Hao Wu, Xiufei Lin, Limei Cai, APL Materials (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0245545 .