Biodegradable ‘intelligent’ materials in response to chemical stimuli for biomedical applications

Background: Biodegradable stimuli-responsive materials, which exhibit large and sharp physical–chemical changes in response to small physical or chemical stimuli, are attracting increasing interests because of their potential applications in biomedical fields, such as transient implants, drug delivery carriers, and tissue engineering scaffolds. Our previous review (see page 493 of issue 4) summarized those biodegradable ‘intelligent’ materials that respond to physical stimuli, such as temperature, ultrasound, and magnetic field. Biodegradable ‘intelligent’ materials that could respond to chemical stimuli, such as pH and specific molecules, have also been studied intensively and significant progress in this field has been achieved. As a single stimulus-responsive property would limit practical application, multi-stimuli-responsive materials are receiving increasing interest and considerable attention. Objective/methods: This review summarizes the development of biodegradable ‘intelligent’ materials in resp...