The design of artificial ion channels with high activity, selectivity and gating function is challenging. Herein, we designed the light‐driven motor molecule MC2, which provides new design criteria to overcome these challenges. MC2 forms a selective K+ channel through a single molecular transmembrane mechanism, and the light‐driven rotary motion significantly accelerates ion transport, which endows the irradiated motor molecule with excellent cytotoxicity and cancer cell selectivity. Mechanistic studies reveal that the rotary motion of MC2 promotes K+ efflux, generates reactive oxygen species and eventually activates caspase‐3‐dependent apoptosis in cancer cells. Combined with the spatiotemporally controllable advantages of light, we believe this strategy can be exploited in the structural design and application of next‐generation synthetic cation transporters for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.

Peptide-based supramolecular hydrogels have attracted great attention due to their good biocompatibility and biodegradability and have become promising candidates for biomedical applications. The bottom-up self-assembly endows the peptides with a highly ordered secondary structure, which has proven to be an effective strategy to improve the mechanical properties of hydrogels through strong physical interactions and energy dissipation. Inspired by the excellent mechanical properties of spider-silk, which can be attributed to the rich β-sheet crystal formation by the hydrophobic peptide fragment, a hydrophobic peptide (HP) that can form a β-sheet assembly was designed and introduced into a poly­(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) scaffold to improve mechanical properties of hydrogels by the cooperative intermolecular physical interactions. Compared with hydrogels without peptide grafting (P-HP0), the strong β-sheet self-assembly domain endows the hybrid hydrogels (P-HP20, P-HP29, and P-HP37) with high strength and toughness. The fracture tensile strength increased from 0.3 to 2.1 MPa (7 times), the toughness increased from 0.4 to 21.6 MJ m–3 (54 times), and the compressive strength increased from 0.33 to 10.43 MPa (31 times) at 75% strain. Moreover, the hybrid hydrogels are enzymatically degradable due to the dominant contribution of the β-sheet assembly for network cross-linking. Combining the good biocompatibility and sustained drug release of the constructed hydrogels, this hydrophobic β-sheet peptide represents a promising candidate for the rational design of hydrogels for biomedical applications.

Inspired by the design criterion of heteroditopic receptor for ion-pair binding, we herein describe a new strategy to construct a rotaxane transporter (RR[2]) for K+/Cl– cotransport. The use of rigid...

The design of artificial ion channels with high activity, selectivity and gating function is challenging. Herein, we designed the light‐driven motor molecule MC2, which provides new design criteria to overcome these challenges. MC2 forms a selective K+ channel through a single molecular transmembrane mechanism, and the light‐driven rotary motion significantly accelerates ion transport, which endows the irradiated motor molecule with excellent cytotoxicity and cancer cell selectivity. Mechanistic studies reveal that the rotary motion of MC2 promotes K+ efflux, generates reactive oxygen species and eventually activates caspase‐3‐dependent apoptosis in cancer cells. Combined with the spatiotemporally controllable advantages of light, we believe this strategy can be exploited in the structural design and application of next‐generation synthetic cation transporters for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.