School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China; National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
Acta Biomater. 2020 Sep 1;113:84-100. doi: 10.1016/j.actbio.2020.07.001. Epub 2020 Jul 4.
Self-healing hydrogels can heal themselves on the damaged sites, which opens up a fascinating way for enhancing lifetimes of materials. Polypeptide/poly(amino acid) is a class of polymers in which natural amino acid monomers or derivatives are linked by amide bonds with a stable and similar secondary structure as natural proteins (α-helix or β-fold). They have the advantages of nontoxicity, biodegradability, and low immunogenicity as well as easy modification. All these properties make polypeptides extremely suitable for the preparation of self-healing hydrogels for biomedical applications. In this review, we mainly focus on the progress in the fabrication strategies of polypeptide-based self-healing hydrogels and their biomedical applications in the recent 5 years. Various crosslinking methods for the preparation of polypeptide-based self-healing hydrogels are first introduced, including host-guest interactions, hydrogen bonding, electrostatic interactions, supramolecular self-assembly of β-sheets, and reversible covalent bonds of imine and hydrazone as well as molecular multi-interactions. Some representative biomedical applications of these self-healing hydrogels such as delivery system, tissue engineering, 3D-bioprinting, antibacterial and wound healing as well as bioadhesion and hemostasis are also summarized. Current challenges and perspectives in future for these "smart" hydrogels are proposed at the end . STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Polypeptides with the advantages of nontoxicity, biodegradability, hydrophilicity and low immunogenicity, are extremely suitable for the preparation of self-healing hydrogels in biomedical applications. Recently, the researches of polypeptide-based self-healing hydrogel have drawn the great attentions for scientists and engineers. A review to summarize the recent progress in design and biomedical applications of these polypeptide-based self-healing hydrogels is highly needed. In this review, we mainly focus on the progress in fabrication strategies of polypeptide-based self-healing hydrogels and biomedical applications in recent five years and aim to draw the increased attention to the importance of these "smart" hydrogels, facilitating the advances in biomedical applications. We believe this work would draw interest from readers of Acta Biomaterialia.
自修复水凝胶可以在受损部位自行修复，为提高材料的使用寿命开辟了一条引人入胜的途径。多肽/聚（氨基酸）是一类聚合物，其中天然氨基酸单体或衍生物通过酰胺键连接，具有与天然蛋白质（α-螺旋或β-折叠）相似的稳定二级结构。它们具有无毒、可生物降解和低免疫原性以及易于修饰的优点。所有这些特性使得多肽非常适合用于制备用于生物医学应用的自修复水凝胶。在本综述中，我们主要关注近年来用于制备基于多肽的自修复水凝胶的策略及其在生物医学中的应用的进展。首先介绍了用于制备基于多肽的自修复水凝胶的各种交联方法，包括主体-客体相互作用、氢键、静电相互作用、β-折叠的超分子自组装以及亚胺和腙的可逆共价键以及分子多相互作用。还总结了这些自修复水凝胶在一些代表性的生物医学应用，如递送系统、组织工程、3D 生物打印、抗菌和伤口愈合以及生物黏附和止血。最后提出了这些“智能”水凝胶在未来面临的挑战和展望。
