Verma Shubhangini Singh, Bhattacharya Shinjini, Kumar Sachin, Chaudhary Nitin
Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati 781 039, India.
Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati 781 039, India.
Biophys Chem. 2025 Jul;322:107438. doi: 10.1016/j.bpc.2025.107438. Epub 2025 Mar 24.
A vast majority of peptide hydrogelators harbor a bulky, non-native aromatic moiety. Such foreign moieties raise safety concerns as far as biomedical applications of hydrogels are concerned. The hydrogel research, therefore, has branched to another dimension - to identify native or native-like short peptide stretches that could cause the gelation of biological fluids. Using well-defined criteria to identify native peptide stretches that could form a viscous solution in water but cause gelation of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), we identified the hexapeptide stretch from human tau, viz. tau, as a promising injectable hydrogelator. The peptide causes instant gelation of PBS and the cell culture media. Such hydrogels find applications as drug delivery vehicles, scaffolds for mammalian cell culture, wound-dressing material, etc.
绝大多数肽水凝胶剂都含有一个庞大的、非天然的芳香部分。就水凝胶的生物医学应用而言，这些外来部分引发了安全问题。因此，水凝胶研究已转向另一个方向——识别能够导致生物流体凝胶化的天然或类似天然的短肽片段。我们使用明确的标准来识别那些在水中可形成粘性溶液但能使磷酸盐缓冲盐水（PBS）凝胶化的天然肽片段，从而确定了来自人类tau蛋白的六肽片段，即tau，作为一种有前景的可注射水凝胶剂。该肽能使PBS和细胞培养基立即凝胶化。此类水凝胶可应用于药物递送载体、哺乳动物细胞培养支架、伤口敷料材料等。
