Research Article
Mengmeng Li, Xiaofan Xu, Ra
Abstract
Traditional self-assembling peptide can form nanofiber scaffolds to meet the challenges of advance biomaterial, cell culture, tissue engineering and regeneration. L-amino acids have been widely used instead of D-amino acids to design nanomaterial since some D-amino acids have toxicity of cells. Here we report that using D-amino acids to design a new D-form self-assembling peptide DSAP-2 and the circular dichroism, atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy show that the peptide can form nanofiber scaffold as well. Furthermore, cell inhibition assay confirmed this D-form peptide show no toxicity of cells that can support cell growth. Fluorescence microscopy results show that cells had less cell apoptosis in the 3D environment and displayed a fast proliferation after cultured for 7days. Peptide’s hydrogel not only formed nano-scaffolds surrounded by cells in a 3-D cell culture, but achieved rapid hemostasis in a rabbit liver wound model. Our study suggests this peptide could be used in the wound and beyond in the future. This work could also inspire us to design more novel D-form self-assembling peptide in biomaterials and biomedical areas.