Peptide conjugate hydrogelators

Abstract

5Molecular gelators are currently receiving a great deal of attention. These are small molecules which, under the appropriate conditions, assemble in solution to, in the majority of cases, give long fibrillar structures which entangle to form a three-dimensional network. This immobilises the solvent, resulting in a gel. Such gelators have potential application in a number of important areas from drug delivery to tissue engineering. Recently, the use of peptide-conjugates has become 10 prevalent with oligopeptides (from as short as two amino acids in length) co njugated to a polymer, alkyl chain or aromatic group such as naphthalene or fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl (Fmoc) being shown to be effective molecular gelators. The field of gelation is extremely large; here we will focus our attention on the use of these peptide-conjugates as molecular hydrogelators.

A microrheological study of hydrogel kinetics and micro-heterogeneity

“…By far the most studied group of aromatic peptide conjugates are peptides capped with the fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl moiety a Present address: School of Physics and Astronomy, E. C. Stoner building, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. e-mail: A.Aufderhorst-Roberts@leeds.ac.uk (Fmoc) [12]. Hydrogels can also be formed from Fmocamino acids, with Fmoc-Tyrosine being the most commonly studied [13][14][15][16].…”

Controlling supramolecular polymerization through multicomponent self‐assembly

“…Strategies to control the size and shape of nano-and micrometer size objects that rely on selective solvent techniques in the self-assembly of block copolymers will not be discussed here. [60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73] Supramolecular multicomponent gels, [74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89] or orthogonal self-assembly, [90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97] self-sorting [98][99][100][101][102][103][104] and chiral amplification strategies 105 in multicomponent supramolecular polymers will not be covered in detail, and the interested reader is referred to the recent literature and review articles.…”

Gasotransmitter delivery via self-assembling peptides: Treating diseases with natural signaling gases

“…The importance of aromatic stacking interactions has been thoroughly studied, and an N-terminal Fmoc group is more than a simple hydrophobic group. It facilitates self-assembly and gelation through π-π stacking for a wide variety of aromatic peptide amphiphiles [165,166]. A recent study comparing two aromatic peptide amphiphiles with identical peptide sequences but varied aromatic groups (Fmoc and naphthyl) found that the Fmoc peptide gels at above 0.1% while the naphthyl peptide gels at concentrations as low as 0.01% [167].…”