Hydrogels for Nucleic Acid Drugs Delivery

Nucleic acid drugs are one of the hot spots in the field of biomedicine in recent years, and play a crucial role in the treatment of many diseases. However, its low stability and difficulty in target drug delivery are the bottlenecks restricting its application. Hydrogels are proven to be promising for improving the stability of nucleic acid drugs, reducing the adverse effects of rapid degradation, sudden release, and unnecessary diffusion of nucleic acid drugs. In this review, the strategies of loading nucleic acid drugs in hydrogels are summarized for various biomedical research, and classify the mechanism principles of these strategies, including electrostatic binding, hydrogen bond based binding, hydrophobic binding, covalent bond based binding and indirect binding using various carriers. In addition, this review also describes the release strategies of nucleic acid drugs, including photostimulation-based release, enzyme-responsive release, pH-responsive release, and temperature-responsive release. Finally, the applications and future research directions of hydrogels for delivering nucleic acid drugs in the field of medicine are discussed.