Emerging Role of Injectable Dipeptide Hydrogels in Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Owing to their properties such as biocompatibility, tunable mechanical properties, permeability toward oxygen, nutrients, and the ability to hold a significant amount of water, hydrogels have wide applications in biomedical research. They have been engaged in drug delivery systems, 3D cell culture, imaging, and extracellular matrix (ECM) mimetics. Injectable hydrogels represent a major subset of hydrogels possessing advantages of site-specific conformation with minimal invasive techniques. It preserves the inherent properties of drug/biomolecules and is devoid of any side effects associated with surgery. Various polymeric materials utilized in developing injectable hydrogels are associated with the limitations of toxicity, immunogenicity, tedious manufacturing processes, and lack of easy synthetic tunability. Peptides are an important class of biomaterials that have interesting properties such as biocompatibility, stimuli responsiveness, shear thinning, self-healing, and biosignaling. They lack immunogenicity and toxicity. Therefore, numerous peptide-based injectable hydrogels have been explored in the past, and a few of them have reached the market. In recent years, minimalistic dipeptides have shown their ability to form stable hydrogels through cooperative noncovalent interactions. In addition to inherent properties of lengthy peptide-based injectable hydrogels, dipeptides have the unique advantages of low production cost, high synthetic accessibility, and higher stability. Given the instances of expanding significance of injectable peptide hydrogels in biomedical research and an emerging recent trend of dipeptide-based injectable hydrogels, a timely review on dipeptide-based injectable hydrogels shall highlight various aspects of this interesting class of biomaterials. This concise review that focuses on the dipeptide injectable hydrogel may stimulate the current trends of research on this class of biomaterial to translate its significance as interesting products for biomedical applications.

Designing Pathway-Controlled Multicomponent Ultrashort Peptide Hydrogels with Diverse Functionalities at the Nanoscale for Directing Cellular Behavior

“…80,83−85 Specifically, short peptides with the advantage of facile synthesis and higher stability have been reported to effectively inherit the properties of large proteins or peptides. 83 In this context, we were curious to explore the effect of diverse nanostructural morphology and tunable gel stiffness in a single coassembled system in directing and controlling the cellular behavior. Moreover, the surfactant, i.e., Cbz-S-OH, in providing a hydrophilic coating on the Cbz-FF-OH fibers is expected to play a crucial role in facilitating cellular growth and proliferation.…”

Mechanisms and influencing factors of peptide hydrogel formation and biomedicine applications of hydrogels

“…Injectable hydrogels are widely used in biomedicine and are typically prepared by rapid sol–gel phase transitions or by in situ chemical polymerization. 141…”

“…Injectable hydrogels are widely used in biomedicine and are typically prepared by rapid sol-gel phase transitions or by in situ chemical polymerization. 141 Liu et al 142 designed an injectable peptide hydrogel OE (VKVKVOVK-VDPPT-KVEKVKV-NH 2 ) that can be used as the carrier material for anti-tumor drugs GEM and paclitaxel (PTX). The peptide has a b-sheet structure under neutral conditions but is irregularly coiled under acidic conditions, which means the hydrogel can release drugs at the tumor site.…”

Differentiating aliphatic and aromatic alcohols using triazine-based supramolecular organogelators: end group-specific selective gelation with chain length of alcohols

“…Supramolecular gels are classified into hydrogels and organogels primarily based on the solvent present in the gel network; hydrogels contain water and organogels contain organic solvents. [10][11][12][13] The chain length of the solvent has a significant impact on the gelation of LMWG. 14 In general, longer chain lengths of solvent molecules promote faster gelation through enhanced interactions and improved network mobility, whereas shorter solvent chain lengths hinder gelation due to fewer interactions between the gelator molecules and high fluidity, leading to delayed gel formation, as described by Zhu et al 15 It is still elusive to predict gelation capabilities of a solvent for a given gelator molecule.…”