Ricerc@Sapienza

Peptide-based hydrogels have been widely used for both tissue engineering approaches and therapeutic drug delivery mainly thanks to their tissue-like water content and tunable physicochemical properties. In particular, the modulation of the hydrogel chemical structure influences hydrogel properties. The most common approach for tuning hydrogel properties in terms of cell adhesion or release efficiency of entrapped compounds is chemical crosslinking.

The applications of peptide-based materials are currently expanding, especially in the biomedical field. The biocompatibility and biodegradability of peptide materials, as well as their ability to assemble into ordered secondary structures, are indeed ideal for biotechnological applications. However, their full potential will be exploited once novel synthetic procedures are developed for advanced applications. In this work, we explored the ability of Pseudomonas fluorescens lipase to biosynthesize the self-assembled tetrapeptide FmocPheGlyPhe2 for tissue regeneration.