The herein described technology aims at the development of a platform of injectable hydrogels for application as drug carriers for localized delivery or in the regenerative medicine field. The use of ad-hoc synthesized poly(ether urethane)s (PEUs) as hydrogel forming materials is a common property which characterizes all the systems belonging to this platform. By exploiting PEU LEGO-like structure, a wide plethora of PEUs can be synthesized containing specific functional groups or constituent blocks which result in hydrogels with well-defined physico-chemical properties (e.g., stimuli-responsiveness to for example temperature ot light irradiation, biodegradation, residence time upon injection). PEU high versatility thus allows to engineer both physical and chemical hydrogels according to their final application and exhibiting a high personalization potential which makes them able to perfectly meet patient’s requirements (e.g., type of therapeutic agents, dosage, release kinetics).
The cutting-edge features of the proposed technology rely on the high versatility of its formulations which allows to finely tune their properties to maximize their therapeutic efficacy. Through a proper selection of hydrogel constituents both physical and chemical systems can be designed, with the potential to be loaded with a wide array of different therapeutic agents (e.g., hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs, biomolecules) at high concentration. These therapeutic agents will be then released in loco with a sustained and prolonged kinetics according to the specific requirements of the targeted application. In addition, the characteristic injectability of the formulations and their ability to undergo a post-injection gelation make them able to perfectly fill each biological cavity. Differently from the currently employed devices, the formulations belonging to the platform hold a huge personalization potential in terms of type of encapsulated payload, dosage and release timing.