Department of Pharmacy, Research Centre on Bioactive Peptides (CIRPeB), University of Naples "Federico II", Via Mezzocannone 16, 80134 Naples, Italy.
Department of Oral Biology, The Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Soft Matter. 2019 Jan 21;15(3):487-496. doi: 10.1039/c8sm02366b. Epub 2019 Jan 2.
Short peptides or single amino acids are interesting building blocks for fabrication of hydrogels, frequently used as extracellular matrix-mimicking scaffolds for cell growth in tissue engineering. The combination of two or more peptide hydrogelators could allow obtaining different materials exhibiting new architectures, tunable mechanical properties, high stability and improved biofunctionality. Here we report on the synthesis, formulation and multi-scale characterization of peptide-based mixed hydrogels formed by the low molecular weight Fmoc-FF (N-fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl diphenylalanine) hydrogelator and of the PEG-(FY)3 hexapeptide, containing three repetitions of the Phe-Tyr motif and a PEG moiety at its N-terminus. Mixed hydrogels were also prepared by replacing PEG-(FY)3 with its analogue (FY)3, without the PEG moiety. Rheology analysis confirmed the improved mechanical features of the multicomponent gels prepared at two different ratios (2/1 or 1/1, v/v). However, the presence of the hydrophilic PEG polymeric moiety causes a slowing down of the gel kinetic formation (from 42 to 18 minutes) and a decrease of the gel rigidity (G' from 9 to 6 kPa). Preliminary in vitro biocompatibility and cell adhesion assays performed on Chinese hamster ovarian (CHO) cells suggest a potential employment of these multicomponent hydrogels as exogenous scaffold materials for tissue engineering.
短肽或单个氨基酸是构建水凝胶的有趣构建块，它们常被用作组织工程中细胞生长的细胞外基质模拟支架。两种或更多种肽水凝胶形成剂的组合可以获得具有不同结构、可调机械性能、高稳定性和改善的生物功能的新材料。在这里，我们报告了基于肽的混合水凝胶的合成、配方和多尺度表征，这些混合水凝胶由低分子量 Fmoc-FF（N-芴甲氧羰基二苯丙氨酸）水凝胶形成剂和 PEG-（FY）3 六肽形成，该六肽包含三个重复的 Phe-Tyr 基序和其 N 末端的 PEG 部分。混合水凝胶也可以通过用没有 PEG 部分的类似物（FY）3 代替 PEG-（FY）3 来制备。流变学分析证实了在两种不同比例（2/1 或 1/1，v/v）下制备的多组分凝胶的机械性能得到了改善。然而，亲水性 PEG 聚合物部分的存在导致凝胶动力学形成速度减慢（从 42 分钟到 18 分钟）和凝胶刚性降低（G'从 9 kPa 降低到 6 kPa）。在中华仓鼠卵巢（CHO）细胞上进行的初步体外生物相容性和细胞黏附试验表明，这些多组分水凝胶有可能作为组织工程的外源性支架材料使用。
