Introducing D‑Amino Acid or Simple Glycoside into Small Peptides to Enable Supramolecular Hydrogelators to Resist Proteolysis

摘要

Here we report the examination of twonconvenient strategies, the use of a D-amino acid residue or anglycoside segment, for increasing the proteolytic resistance ofnsupramolecular hydrogelators based on small peptides. Ournresults show that the introduction of D-amino acid or glycosidento the peptides significantly increases the resistance of thenhydrogelators against proteinase K, a powerful endopeptidase.nThe insertion of D-amino acid in the peptide backbone,nhowever, results relatively low storage moduli of the hydrogels,nlikely due to the disruption of the superstructures of thenmolecular assembly. In contrast, the introduction of anglycoside to the C-terminal of peptide enhances thenbiostability of the hydrogelators without the significant decrease of the storage moduli of the hydrogels. This work suggestsnthat the inclusion of a simple glycogen in hydrogelators is a useful approach to increase their biostability, and the gainednunderstanding from the work may ultimately lead to development of hydrogels of functional peptides for biomedical applicationsnthat require long-term biostability.