Immune-active polymeric materials for the treatment of inflammatory diseases

In recent years, a growing understanding of the underlying mechanisms of autoinflammatory and autoimmune disease has enabled significant advances in biomaterial therapeutics for their treatment and prevention. Drug-free or immune-active polymeric materials are of particular interest due to their chemical tunability, multifaceted mechanisms of action, and potential to offer alternatives to conventional treatments. While in many cases the relationships between polymer physicochemical properties and the immune processes they influence are context-dependent and require further clarity, several concepts are emerging that can be applied in the design of anti-inflammatory materials. This review highlights recent work that investigates these relationships, as well as work that applies them to immunomodulatory biomaterials for the treatment or prevention of autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases.