Exploration of peptide-based hydrogels

The development of hydrogels in recent years has attracted tremendous research interest in their biological applications. Supramolecular hydrogels are formed by small molecular self-assembling into three-dimensional networks of nanofibers; their have achieved considerable development in drug delivery, biosensing, tissue engineering, and wound healing. In this work, the wound healing hydrogel based on (D)-glucosamine was synthesized and 24 compounds of pentapentapeptides (six biological active epitope with fluorenyl, pyrenyl and napthyl as hydrophobic group) were synthesized by Merrifield approach. Pi to Pi interaction of the hydrophobic group is the main force for inducing hydrogelation. We use the circular dichroism (CD), fluorescence , transmission electron micrograph (TEM) and scanning electron micrograph (SEM) to characterize the pentapeptide-based hydrogels. Also, the preliminary result on the toxicity studied on this pentapeptide derivatives render us more information on how the toxicity originate. After summarizing the reports on the molecular hydrogels made from clinical used drugs and our preliminary toxicity test on pentapeptide derivatives, it helps us to gain more knowledge about the strategy and design for new kind of biomaterials