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

Abstract

Metabolic syndrome comprises a cluster of comorbidities that represent a major risk of developing chronic diseases, such as type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and stroke. Alarmingly, metabolic syndrome reaches epidemic proportions worldwide. Today, lifestyle changes and multiple drug-based therapies represent the gold standard to address metabolic syndrome. However, such approaches face two major limitations: complicated drug therapeutic regimes, which in most cases could lead to patient incompliance, and limited drug efficacy. This has encouraged scientists to search for novel routes to deal with metabolic syndrome and related diseases. Within such approaches, self-assembled peptide formulations have emerged as a promising alternative for treating metabolic syndrome. In particular, self-assembled peptide hydrogels, either as acellular or cell-load three-dimensional scaffoldings have reached significant relevance in the biomedical field to prevent and restore euglycemia, as well as for controlling cardiovascular diseases and obesity. This has been possible thanks to the physicochemical tunability of peptides, which are developed from a chemical toolbox of versatile amino acids enabling flexibility of designing a wide range of self-assembled/co-assembled nanostructures forming biocompatible viscoelastic hydrogels. Peptide hydrogels can be combined with several biological entities, such as extracellular matrix proteins, drugs or cells, forming functional biologics with therapeutic ability for treatment of metabolic syndrome-comorbidities. Additionally, self-assembly peptides combine safety, tolerability, and effectivity attributes; by this presenting a promising platform for the development of novel pharmaceuticals capable of addressing unmet therapeutic needs for diabetes, cardiovascular disorders and obesity. In this review, recent advances in developing self-assembly peptide nanostructures tailored for improving treatment of metabolic syndrome and related diseases will be discussed from basic research to preclinical research studies. Challenges facing the development of approved medicinal products based on self-assembling peptide nanomaterials will be discussed in light of regulatory requirement for clinical authorization.

Capillary electrophoresis in the analysis of therapeutic peptides—A review

“…Peptides as novel therapeutics have been investigated across the therapeutic spectrum, but mainly in areas of high interest to the pharmaceutical industry, such as oncology [28,[44][45][46][47][48], metabolic [49][50][51][52][53][54] and cardiovascular diseases [55][56][57]. Fields, such as infectious diseases [58][59][60][61], inflammation [62][63][64], and neurodegenerative diseases [26,65,66], seem to be particularly promising.…”

Potential Application of Self-Assembled Peptides and Proteins in Breast Cancer and Cervical Cancer

“…Luis Alberto Castillo-Díaz et al demonstrated that self-assembling peptide hydrogels (SAPEs) were able to form nanostructures with a diameter of 20-200 nm. The SAPEs were adjuvanted with CpG-induced and expanded antigen-specific CD8+ T cells in mice [64]. Wei Zhang discovered a novel drug nanocarrier that reduced the survival of prostate cancer cells in vitro by slowly delivering DTX (which is highly concentrated) with GRP ligands on its surface [65].…”

Adhesion and whitening efficacy of P11-4 self-assembling peptide and HAP suspension after using NaOCl as a pre-treatment agent

“…Peptide self-assembly is a relatively new approach for creating synthetic super molecular architectures [ 12 ], which occurs via spontaneous and reversible noncovalent interactions between peptide chains [ 8 , 9 ]. The P11-4 peptide (clinically available as Curodont Repair) with the chemical structure: Ace-Gln–Gln–Arg–Phe–Glu–Trp–Glu–Phe–Glu–Gln–Gln–NH2 responds to pH triggers and assembles in the hierarchical order of tapes, ribbons, fibrils, and fibers.…”