Self-Assembly of a Dentinogenic Peptide Hydrogel

Abstract

Current standard of care for treating infected dental pulp, root canal therapy, retains the physical properties of the tooth to a large extent, but does not aim to rejuvenate the pulp tissue. Tissue-engineered acellular biomimetic hydrogels have great potential to facilitate the regeneration of the tissue through the recruitment of autologous stem cells. We propose the use of a dentinogenic peptide that self-assembles into β-sheet-based nanofibers that constitute a biodegradable and injectable hydrogel for support of dental pulp stem cells. The peptide backbone contains a β-sheet-forming segment and a matrix extracellular phosphoglycoprotein mimic sequence at the C-terminus. The high epitope presentation of the functional moiety in the self-assembled nanofibers may enable recapitulation of a functional niche for the survival and proliferation of autologous cells. We elucidated the hierarchical self-assembly of the peptide through biophysical techniques, including scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The material property of the self-assembled hydrogel was probed though oscillatory rheometry, demonstrating its thixotropic nature. We also demonstrate the cytocompatibility of the hydrogel with respect to fibroblasts and dental pulp stem cells. The self-assembled peptide platform holds promise for guided dentinogenesis and it can be tailored to a variety of applications in soft tissue engineering and translational medicine in the future.

Concentration- and Temperature-Responsive Reversible Transition in Amide-Functionalized Surface-Active Ionic Liquids: Micelles to Vesicles to Organogel

“…This is a dynamic process, taking approximately 10 min under controlled conditions of temperature (25 °C) and atmospheric pressure. The SEM images of the gel formed in the representative DMSO/water system show physically cross-linked 3D fibrous networks ( Figure 7 J–L), 61 , 62 whereas AFM images ( Figure 7 M–O) show the formation of short sponge-like fibers. 63 As shown in AFM images of the organogels ( Figure 7 M–O), bundles of fibers are linked through physical interactions.…”

Combined Tumor Environment Triggered Self‐Assembling Peptide Nanofibers and Inducible Multivalent Ligand Display for Cancer Cell Targeting with Enhanced Sensitivity and Specificity

“…The key component of SAM‐P is the self‐assembling peptide domain which is based on de novo designed multidomain peptides (MDPs). In the past decade, we and several other groups studied self‐assembled MDPs and showed their therapeutic efficacy and excellent biocompatibility as tissue scaffolds, [ 14 ] drug and gene delivery vehicles, [ 12a,15 ] and recently antimicrobial agents. [ 16 ] As demonstrated previously, the MDP was designed to have a general sequence of K x (QL) y K x in which x and y represent the numbers of lysine (K) residues and the numbers of glutamine (Q) and leucine (L) pairs of repeating units.…”

Hydrogels and Dentin–Pulp Complex Regeneration: From the Benchtop to Clinical Translation

“…For dentin–pulp complex regeneration, hydrogels act as carriers of stem/progenitor cells with odontogenic potential, such as DPSCs [ 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ], odontoblasts-like cells [ 68 , 69 , 70 ], HUVECs [ 64 , 71 ], SCAP [ 72 , 73 ], SHED [ 66 , 74 , 75 , 76 ], BMMSCs [ 66 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 ], PDLSCs [ 66 ], endothelial cells [ 78 ] and primary dental pulp cells [ 81 ]. They can also act as carriers for the local delivery of antibiotics, such as clindamycin [ 82 ] and bioactive molecules, aiming to promote tissue regeneration, such as VEGF [ 20 , 61 , 83 ], FGF [ 20 , 83 , 84 , 85 ], BMP [ 65 ], TGF-β1 [ 20 , 86 ], stem cell factor [ 87 ], dentonin sequence [ 88 ] and RGD cell-binding motifs [ 56 , 89 ]. Once implanted in site, being biodegradable, hydrogels allow the release of bioactive molecules that influence the surrounding environment [ 90 , 91 ] ( Figure 3 ).…”