A Review on Recent Advances in Stabilizing Peptides/Proteins upon Fabrication in Hydrogels from Biodegradable Polymers

Abstract

Hydrogels evolved as an outstanding carrier material for local and controlled drug delivery that tend to overcome the shortcomings of old conventional dosage forms for small drugs (NSAIDS) and large peptides and proteins. The aqueous swellable and crosslinked polymeric network structure of hydrogels is composed of various natural, synthetic and semisynthetic biodegradable polymers. Hydrogels have remarkable properties of functionality, reversibility, sterilizability, and biocompatibility. All these dynamic properties of hydrogels have increased the interest in their use as a carrier for peptides and proteins to be released slowly in a sustained manner. Peptide and proteins are remarkable therapeutic agents in today’s world that allow the treatment of severe, chronic and life-threatening diseases, such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis. Despite few limitations, hydrogels provide fine tuning of proteins and peptides delivery with enormous impact in clinical medicine. Novels drug delivery systems composed of smart peptides and molecules have the ability to drive self-assembly and form hydrogels at physiological pH. These hydrogels are significantly important for biological and medical fields. The primary objective of this article is to review current issues concerned with the therapeutic peptides and proteins and impact of remarkable properties of hydrogels on these therapeutic agents. Different routes for pharmaceutical peptides and proteins and superiority over other drugs candidates are presented. Recent advances based on various approaches like self-assembly of peptides and small molecules to form novel hydrogels are also discussed. The article will also review the literature concerning the classification of hydrogels on a different basis, polymers used, “release mechanisms” their physical and chemical characteristics and diverse applications.

Influence of Concentration on Release and Permeation Process of Model Peptide Substance-Corticotropin-From Semisolid Formulations

“…The hydrogel aqueous environment can stabilise cells and complex drugs, including peptides, proteins, oligonucleotides and DNA. The modification of the composition of the hydrogel base used may allow obtaining a base for the controlled release of active substances from the formulations prepared [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ].…”

Ultrashort Peptide Self-Assembly: Front-Runners to Transport Drug and Gene Cargos

“…The rich chemistry of various non-covalent interactions has led to swift development of self-assemblies as drug carriers, particularly, in short peptides (Huang et al, 2013;Panda and Chauhan, 2014;Iglesias and Marchesan, 2017;Amit et al, 2018;Raza et al, 2018;Mishra and Jyoti Panda, 2019).…”

“…The stability of peptide-based hydrogels, specially to enzymatic degradation has been reviewed by Yadav et al (2020). The composition of hydrogel material with tuneable properties controls the release of sensitive drugs (Du et al, 2015;Raza et al, 2018). Various methods to design and control the self-assembly mechanism in hydrogels for drug-delivery have been elaborated in the literature (Altunbas and Pochan, 2011;Briuglia et al, 2014;Yu et al, 2015;Li et al, 2019b).…”

Self-Assembling Peptides as an Emerging Platform for the Treatment of Metabolic Syndrome

“…Moreover, recent studies explore the rationale stabilization of peptide-based formulations to develop novel antidiabetic pharmaceutics with desirable pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic profiles. 100,101 The fine-tuning of peptide pH-responsiveness within peptide formulations is an alternative to meet hyperglycemia. An example of this is the glucose responsive β-sheet-based peptide hydrogel RATEA-16 also known as F0 hydrogel, which has shown a good potential to release bovine insulin ( Figure 2).…”