Immunostimulatory Hydrogel with Synergistic Blockage of Glutamine Metabolism and Chemodynamic Therapy for Postoperative Management of Glioblastoma.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most lethal malignant brain tumors in the central nervous system. Patients face many challenges after surgery, including tumor recurrence, intracranial pressure increase due to cavitation, and limitations associated with immediate postoperative oral chemotherapy. Here an injected peptide gel with in situ immunostimulatory functions is developed to coordinate the regulation of glutamine metabolism and chemodynamic therapy for overcoming these postoperative obstacles.

Acid-Induced in Situ Phase Separation and Percolation for Constructing Bi-Continuous Phase Hydrogel Electrodes With Motion-Insensitive Property.

Conducting polymer hydrogels have gained attention in the bioelectronics field due to their unique combination of biocompatibility and customizable mechanical properties. However, achieving both excellent conductivity and mechanical strength in a hydrogel remains a significant challenge, primarily because of the inherent conflict between the hydrophobic nature of conducting polymers and the hydrophilic characteristics of hydrogels. To address this issue, this work proposes a simple one-step acid-induced approach that not only promotes the gelation of hydrophilic polymers but also facilitates the in situ phase separation of hydrophobic conducting polymers under mild conditions.

Peptide-Based Optical/Electronic Materials: Assembly and Recent Applications in Biomedicine, Sensing, and Energy Storage.

The unique optical and electronic properties of living systems are impressive. Peptide-based supramolecular self-assembly systems attempt to mimic these properties by preparation optical/electronic function materials with specific structure through simple building blocks, rational molecular design, and specific kinetic stimulation. From the perspective of building blocks and assembly strategies, the unique optical and electronic properties of peptide-based nanostructures, including peptides self-assembly and peptides regulate the assembly of external function subunits, are systematically reviewed.

Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting of medium toughened dipeptide hydrogel scaffolds with Hofmeister effect.

Short peptide self-assembled hydrogels as 3D bioprinting inks show excellent biocompatibility and diverse functional expansion, and have broad application prospects in cell culture and tissue engineering. However, the preparation of biological hydrogel inks with adjustable mechanical strength and controllable degradation for 3D bioprinting still faces big challenges. Herein, we develop dipeptide bio-inks that can be gelled in-situ based on Hofmeister sequence, and prepare hydrogel scaffold by using a layer-by-layer 3D printing strategy.

Hydrogel Nanoarchitectonics of a Flexible and Self-Adhesive Electrode for Long-Term Wireless Electroencephalogram Recording and High-Accuracy Sustained Attention Evaluation.

Hydrogels are ideal building blocks to fabricate the next generation of electrodes for acquiring high-quality physiological electrical signals, for example, electroencephalography (EEG). However, collection of EEG signals still suffers from electrode deformation, sweating, extensive body motion and vibration, and environmental interference. Herein, polyvinyl alcohol and polyvinylpyrrolidone are selected to prepare a hydrogel network with tissue-like modulus and excellent flexibility.

Surface Self-Assembly of Dipeptides on Porous CaCO Particles Promoting Cell Internalization.

The self-assembling behavior of peptides and derivatives is crucial in the natural process to construct various architectures and achieve specific functions. However, the surface or interfacial self-assembly, in particular, on the surface of micro- or nanoparticles is even less systematically investigated. Here, uniform porous CaCO microparticles were prepared with different charged, hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces to assess the self-assembling behavior of dipeptides composed of various sequences.

Long-range ordered amino acid assemblies exhibit effective optical-to-electrical transduction and stable photoluminescence.

Bio-endogenous peptide molecules are ideal components for fabrication of biocompatible and environmentally friendly semiconductors materials. However, to date, their applications have been limited due to the difficulty in obtaining stable, high-performance devices. Herein, simple amino acid derivatives fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl-leucine (Fmoc-L) and fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl-tryptophan (Fmoc-W) are utilized to form long-range ordered supramolecular nanostructures by tight aromatic stacking and extensive hydrogen bonding with mechanical, electrical and optical properties.

Polyaniline Functionalized Peptide Self-Assembled Conductive Hydrogel for 3D Cell Culture.

The functionalization of self-assembled peptide hydrogel is of great importance to broaden its applications in the field of biomedicine. In this work, conductive hydrogel is fabricated by introducing conductive polymer polyaniline into peptide self-assembled hydrogel. Compared with pure peptide formed hydrogel, the conductive hydrogel exhibits enhanced conductivity, mechanical property and stability.

Self-assembly of Fmoc-amino acids in capillary confined space forming a parallel ordered fiber network for application in vascularization.

Matrices formed by self-assembly of amino acids and their derivatives are suitable for cell spreading, migration and proliferation, and widely used in tissue engineering and organ regeneration, due to the biological endogenous molecules and weak intermolecular forces. The self-assembly process is not only affected by dynamic and thermodynamic factors, but also the assembled space. In this work, capillary tubes with different diameters are chosen to mimic a confined environment and the effect of capillary space on the self-assembly behavior of Fmoc-amino acids with different oil-water partition coefficients (log ) was investigated.

Fabrication of Conductive, Adhesive, and Stretchable Agarose-Based Hydrogels for a Wearable Biosensor.

Herein, a strategy is proposed to prepare a conductive, self-adhesive, and stretchable agarose gel with the merits of distinct heat resistance, freeze resistance, and long-term moisture retention. To endow the gels with conductivity, monodisperse carbon nanotubes modified by polydopamine are introduced into the gel networks, which promote both conductivity and mechanical strength of the gels. Meanwhile, further addition of glycerol enhances excellent stretchability as well as heating/freezing tolerability and moisture retention of the gels.

synthesis of superorganism-like Au NPs within microgels with ultra-wide absorption in visible and near-infrared regions for combined cancer therapy.

The whole is a collection of parts and fulfills specific functions that the parts do not have. In this work, 50 nm Au NPs were in situ synthesized and close packed into a superorganism-like superstructure by means of microgel 3D networks. The combined microgel is endowed with ultra-wide absorption in visible and near-infrared regions between 500 and 1100 nm in spite of Au NPs not having this property.

Dipeptide Self-assembled Hydrogels with Shear-Thinning and Instantaneous Self-healing Properties Determined by Peptide Sequences.

Dipeptide self-assembled hydrogels have potential biomedical applications because of their great biocompatibility, bioactivity, and tunable physicochemical properties, which can be modulated in the molecular level by design of amino acid sequences. Herein, a series of dipeptides (Fmoc-FL, -YL, -LL, and -YA) are designed to form shear-thinning hydrogels with self-healing and tunable mechanical properties by adjusting the synergetic effect of hydrophobic interactions (π-π stacking and hydrophobic effect) and hydrogen bonds of peptides through substitution of amino acid residues. The enhancement of hydrophobic interactions is a primary factor to promote mechanical rigidity of hydrogels, and strong hydrogen-bonding interactions between molecules contribute to the instantaneous self-healing property, which is supported by experimental studies (FTIR, CD, SEM, AFM, and rheology) and molecular dynamics simulations.

Peptide assembly assisted triplet-triplet annihilation photon upconversion in non-deoxygenated water.

Triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC) has great potential in many fields. However, a stable TTA-UC system with adjustable UC efficiency in non-deoxygenated water is still in urgent demand. Here, the first example of short peptide-tuned UC luminescence in water is reported.

Dipeptide Self-Assembled Hydrogels with Tunable Mechanical Properties and Degradability for 3D Bioprinting.

Supramolecular hydrogels self-assembled from short peptides have shown great potential as biomimetic extracellular matrices with controllable properties designed at the molecular level. However, their weak mechanical strength still remains a big challenge for 3D bioprinting. Herein, two oppositely charged dipeptides are designed and used as bioinks in a ″layer-by-layer″ alternative bioprinting strategy.

Design of a Flexible Wearable Smart sEMG Recorder Integrated Gradient Boosting Decision Tree Based Hand Gesture Recognition.

This paper proposed a wearable smart sEMG recorder integrated gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) based hand gesture recognition. A hydrogel-silica gel based flexible surface electrode band is used as the tissue interface. The sEMG signal is collected using a neural signal acquisition analog front end (AFE) chip.

Gold nanorods based multicompartment mesoporous silica composites as bioagents for highly efficient photothermal therapy.

Photothermal therapy (PTT) based on photothermal effect of the gold nanostructures, has been widely applied as a noninvasive therapy approach in cancer treatment. However, bare Au nanoparticles are not stable enough during the irradiation process, and cannot harvest sufficient energy to kill tumor cells. To improve this, we have fabricated a stable bioagent by loading gold nanorods (AuNRs) into multicompartment mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MMSNs) for the photothermal therapy.

One-step co-assembly method to fabricate photosensitive peptide nanoparticles for two-photon photodynamic therapy.

Peptide-based nanoparticles were employed to load and disperse hydrophobic porphyrins in a one-step co-assembly method in aqueous media. The isolated porphyrins doped within nanoparticles showed enhanced two-photon absorption ability and could effectively generate 1O2 to induce the apoptosis of cancer cells, which holds great prospects in two-photon PDT.

Preparation of Microgels with Ultrahigh Payload of Various Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic Inorganic Nanoparticle Composites up to 92 wt.

Microgel loading with inorganic nanoparticle (NP) composites attracts interest for various biomedical applications. However, the encapsulation of NPs into microgels usually is a diffusion process driven by osmotic pressure, which depends highly on the concentration of NPs and causes low loading efficiency. In this work, we demonstrate preparation of microgels with ultrahigh content of various nano-objects (up to 92%, wt %) by a gelatin "casting" strategy using porous CaCO particles as templates.

Self-Assembly of Monomeric Hydrophobic Photosensitizers with Short Peptides Forming Photodynamic Nanoparticles with Real-Time Tracking Property and without the Need of Release in Vivo.

Employing nanoscaled materials as photosensitizer (PS) carriers is an effective strategy to solve the problem of poor solubility and low tumor selectivity of hydrophobic PS in photodynamic therapy (PDT), which compulsorily requires the PS release in PDT implementation. However, the complicated environment in vivo makes it difficult to precisely design and control the release process and the delivery process requires real-time tracking. Developing a delivery strategy of hydrophobic PS in the monomeric form with fluorescent emission and without consideration of the PS release in the PDT process, is in urgent demand.

Regulating morphologies and near-infrared photothermal conversion of perylene bisimide via sequence-dependent peptide self-assembly.

The assembly behavior of perylene bisimide (PBI) can be precisely organised by the conjugation of sequence-dependent di-peptides in aqueous media. The assembled nanostructures and consequent properties of PBI aggregates can be tuned by the use of different peptide sequences with improved yield of radical anions and enhanced photothermal conversion efficiency.

Tuning Supramolecular Structure and Functions of Peptide bola-Amphiphile by Solvent Evaporation-Dissolution.

Solvent molecules significantly affect the supramolecular self-assembly, for example, in forming solvent-bridged hydrogen bonding networks. Even small changes in solvent composition can have dramatic impact on supramolecular assembly. Herein, we demonstrate the use of trace solvents (as low as 0.

Biofluid-Triggered Burst Release from an Adaptive Covalently Assembled Dipeptide Nanocontainer for Emergency Treatment.

The construction of quickly dissociating containers holding bioactive components that meet the extreme requirements of emergency treatment is highly desirable but remains a great challenge. Here the use of small-molecule-induced dynamic covalent assembly is reported for simple and tunable fabrication of a biocompatible diphenylalanine-based nanocontainer toward rapidly responsive cargo delivery. The assembled nanocontainer can adaptively encapsulate various charged or neutral molecules.

Hyperbranched Polyglycerol-Induced Porous Silica Nanoparticles as Drug Carriers for Cancer Therapy In Vitro and In Vivo.

Mesoporous silica-based nanoparticles are generally accepted as a potential platform for drug loading with a lot of advantages, except for their complex purification procedures and structures that are difficult to decompose. In this work, biocompatible hyperbranched polyglycerol is introduced to synthesize mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs). The materials possess good biocompatibility, controlled release, and biodegradability.