The Design Of Functional Self-Assembly Peptide Hydrogel And Application Research On Nerve Regeneration

In recent years, nerve regeneration has been a hot topic in the field of medicine and tissue engineering. The quality of life will be seriously affected if nerve is damaged and loses functions. For central nerves, it is difficult to repair and regeneration by itself. Tissue engineering has broght great chance for nerve regeneration. It is important to utilize biomaterial to promote nerve regeneration, functional recovery.Almost all of cells survive in 3D environment in the body. However, in recent biomedical research, cell cultures are often operated in 2D environment, where cells are cultured in plates or dishes. The differences are thus great, which can affect cell growth, even causing cell gene and function changes. Great efforts have been contributed in order to create 3D environment for cell culture. Self-assembling peptide(SAP) RADA16-I can self assemble into nanofibers, which structurally mimic natural excelluar matrix. RADA 16-I is a kind of ideal material to build nerve scaffold, but it has been suffering from a main drawback associated with low p H, which damages cells and host tissues upon direct exposure. Therefoe, the application of RADA 16-I in biomedical fields is limited.In this paper, we designed three self-assembling peptides by modifiying RADA16-I. The designer SAPs was appended with functional motifs containing cell adhesion peptide and neurite outgrowth peptide: RADA 16-RGD、RADA 16-IKVAV and RADA 16-YIGSR. In neutral p H condition, the designer SAPs can form hydrogel quickly by combining them together. The details are as follows:1、 Designing functional self-assembling peptides(SAPs), and characterization through a variety of methods including AFM, TEM, CD and Raman. Investigation on the morphology and structure characteristics of the SAPs in different conditions: assembly time, p H, different base was performed. 2、 Designing bioactive nanofibrous hydrogel by RADA16 IKVAV and RADA16 RGD for neurite outgrowth and cell adhesion. At neutral p H, combining them can rapidly form a gel. Basing on previous studies, we further explore the self-assembly mechanism. Using functional hydrogel to build bioactive scaffolds for in vivo and in vitro experiments; 3、 The preliminary research onthe interaction of RADA16-IKVAV small molecules and silk fibroin large molecules.