Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths globally, with around 2.5 million new cases and 1.8 million fatalities reported each year, driven by late-stage diagnosis, aggressive tumor biology, and limited efficacy of systemic therapies due to poor tumor penetration and dose-limiting toxicities. These clinical challenges underscore the urgent need for localized, precision drug delivery strategies. This review critically examines injectable hydrogel-based platforms as emerging solutions for precision lung cancer therapy, focusing on their design principles, therapeutic mechanisms, and translational potential. Recent literature highlights three transformative advances: (i) in situ-forming hydrogel depots that enable sustained intratumoral drug retention while minimizing systemic exposure; (ii) multifunctional hydrogels capable of co-delivering chemotherapeutics, immunomodulators, or phototherapeutic agents to synergistically remodel the tumor microenvironment; and (iii) stimuli-responsive systems that exploit tumor-specific cues (pH, enzymes, redox state) to achieve on-demand drug release and enhanced therapeutic precision. Preclinical studies consistently demonstrate improved antitumor efficacy, reduced off-target toxicity, and compatibility with radiotherapy, photothermal therapy, and immune checkpoint blockade. Despite these advances, clinical translation remains constrained by key hurdles, including scalable manufacturing, sterilization, long-term biocompatibility, and regulatory standardization. Addressing these challenges will be critical to advancing injectable hydrogels from promising experimental platforms to clinically deployable therapies for lung cancer.
Swarn et al. (2026) studied this question.