Designing Synthetic Hydrogels to Use in Cell Therapy

Hydrogels are polymeric networks characterized by their hydrophilic nature, which enables them to retain their structural integrity while exhibiting a high capacity for water absorption. They have many applications in biology and medicine, including medication delivery, tissue engineering, and wound healing. Peptides and polymers are regarded as very promising materials for hydrogel production due to their inherent advantages, such as biocompatibility, tunability, and reactivity to diverse stimuli.

Peptides, consisting of short sequences of amino acids, can undergo self-assembly and form diverse nanostructures, including hydrogels. Peptide hydrogels possess several notable advantages in comparison to conventional hydrogels. These advantages include their capacity to replicate the extracellular matrix and their potential for customization by the incorporation of specific amino acid sequences for cell adhesion or drug administration.

Polymers consist of elongated chains composed of recurring units, which possess the ability to undergo crosslinking processes, resulting in the formation of hydrogels. Polymer hydrogels frequently exhibit superior mechanical strength compared to peptide hydrogels; they may exhibit reduced biocompatibility. The integration of peptides and polymers enables the synthesis of hybrid hydrogels that exhibit a synergistic combination of the superior characteristics inherent to each constituent material.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the advancement of peptide and polymer hydrogels in the context of biomedical applications. Our research focuses on the development of hydrogels for use in cell therapy. In this study, L and D peptides were synthesized and subsequently crosslinked to form stereocomplexed hydrogels. In the course of synthesizing the peptide LAKLA, we observed that the implementation of a double coupling strategy for lysine residues during the synthesis process resulted in a decrease in the occurrence of lysine deletions. In addition, the peptide was subjected to various analytical techniques for characterization, including matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI), circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, infrared (IR) spectroscopy, and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

It is posited that peptide and polymer hydrogels can fundamentally transform the biomedical engineering domain. The synthesis of hydrogels with biocompatible characteristics can be achieved by the integration of the distinctive attributes of peptides and polymers. Hydrogels possess the potential to facilitate the advancement of novel therapeutic interventions targeting diverse diseases and medical conditions.