On next generation hydrogels

Ingestible hydrogels already appear across food and medicine. This perspective takes stock of what they can do today, then looks at where the next generation is headed as they get tuned to work inside the gastrointestinal tract.

The field pushes in three different directions: hydrogels that act on specific tissue, hydrogels that stay in the gut far longer than current designs, and hydrogels built into ingestible electronics and robots. It closes on what real translation will take, from in vivo models to safety, regulation, and manufacturing at scale.

I designed and drew many of the figures for the paper and helped edit the manuscript. I was an undergraduate researcher in the Feig Lab, and this work reflects some of what I learned there.