Designer Self-Assembling Peptides Nanofiber Scaffolds For 3-Dimensional Cell Cultures And Myocardial Tissue Repair

Self-assembling peptides as synthetic biomaterials have been explored to imitate extracellular matrix (ECM) contribute to cell culture and tissue regeneration. The significant advantages of self-assembling peptides were reproducible nanomaterial properties and adjustable mechanical porosity. Their hydrogel with piled-nanofiber scaffolds can be used to a 3D cell cultured media and can specific change cell fate couple with their designed structures and properties, which suggested they have some special purposes. Here we designed GFSAP, an amphiphilic chiral self-assembling peptide, which contains 16 hydrophilic alternate with hydrophobic amino acid residues, especially a cysteine, forming disulfide bond with another peptide chain by oxidation reaction to increase the stability of nanofiber scaffolds. The secondary structure of GFSAP was characterized by circular dichroism spectroscopy (CD), which forms α β-sheet type of structure under 100μM/37℃ in salt-free water. The spatial structure was observed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and contrast microscope, showed it can self-assemble to nanofiber scaffolds and form hydrogel. And we found this peptide can be worked in 3D cell culture, rapid hemostasis, acceleration infarct myocardium and so on. Our study will inspire the peptide designers for more applications in biomaterials, particularly in cell engineering and tissue engineering.