Dipeptides and their derivatives have attracted tremendous attention owning to their excellent abilities of self-assemble assembling into various structures which have great potentials for applications in biology and/or nanotechnology. In the present study, we dedicate to fabricate a rigid and structure controllable Fmoc-FF/SA composite hydrogel. We found that the modified dipeptide, fluorenyl-9-methoxycarbonyl (Fmoc)-diphenylalanine (Phe-Phe) can self-assemble into rigid hydrogels with structures of nanowires, layered thin films or honeycombs as the change of sodium alginate (SA) concentration. Meanwhile, CD-spectroscopy demonstrated that SA appeared to control the process, but it did not change the arrangement of the Fmoc-FF peptide. Our results demonstrated that the formed hydrogel showed physical and chemical stability as well as possessing good biocompatibility. Rheological measurements showed that the addition of SA could improve the stability of the hydrogel. Cell viability assay revealed that the Fmoc-FF and Fmoc-FF/SA hydrogels are both beneficial for cell proliferation in-vitro . Our results indicated that the fabricated Fmoc-FF/SA composite hydrogels could be used in tissue engineering and drug delivery in the future.
We report a new approach to constructing a peptide–polysaccharide hybrid hydrogel via the calcium-ion-triggered co-assembly of fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl-diphenylalanine (Fmoc-FF) peptide and alginate. Calcium ions triggered the self-assembly of Fmoc-FF peptide into nanofibers with diameter of about 30 nm. Meanwhile, alginate was rapidly crosslinked by the calcium ions, leading to the formation of stable hybrid hydrogel beads. Compared to alginate or Fmoc-FF hydrogel alone, the hybrid Fmoc-FF/alginate hydrogel had much better stability in both water and a phosphate-buffered solution (PBS), probably because of the synergistic effect of noncovalent and ionic interactions. Furthermore, docetaxel was chosen as a drug model, and it was encapsulated by hydrogel beads to study the in vitro release behavior. The sustained and controlled docetaxel release was obtained by varying the concentration ratio between Fmoc-FF peptide and alginate.
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