Gao Yuan, Nieuwendaal Ryan, Dimitriadis Emilios K, Hammouda Boualem, Douglas Jack F, Xu Bing, Horkay Ferenc
Section on Quantitative Imaging and Tissue Sciences, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Materials Science and Engineering Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA.
Gels. 2016 Dec;2(4). doi: 10.3390/gels2040027. Epub 2016 Oct 8.
Hydrogels are of intense recent interest in connection with biomedical applications ranging from 3-D cell cultures and stem cell differentiation to regenerative medicine, controlled drug delivery and tissue engineering. This prototypical form of soft matter has many emerging material science applications outside the medical field. The physical processes underlying this type of solidification are incompletely understood and this limits design efforts aimed at optimizing these materials for applications. We address this general problem by applying multiple techniques (e.g., NMR, dynamic light scattering, small angle neutron scattering, rheological measurements) to the case of a peptide derivative hydrogelator (molecule , NapFFKYp) over a broad range of concentration and temperature to characterize both the formation of individual nanofibers and the fiber network. We believe that a better understanding of the hierarchical self-assembly process and control over the final morphology of this kind of material should have broad significance for biological and medicinal applications utilizing hydrogels.
水凝胶最近在生物医学应用方面引起了广泛关注，其应用范围涵盖从三维细胞培养、干细胞分化到再生医学、可控药物递送和组织工程等领域。这种典型的软物质形式在医学领域之外还有许多新兴的材料科学应用。这种固化类型背后的物理过程尚未完全理解，这限制了旨在优化这些材料以用于各种应用的设计工作。我们通过在广泛的浓度和温度范围内，对一种肽衍生物水凝胶剂（分子，NapFFKYp）应用多种技术（例如，核磁共振、动态光散射、小角中子散射、流变学测量）来解决这个普遍问题，以表征单个纳米纤维的形成和纤维网络。我们相信，更好地理解这种材料的分级自组装过程并控制其最终形态，对于利用水凝胶的生物学和医学应用应该具有广泛的意义。
