Peptide-Based and Polypeptide-Based Hydrogels for Drug Delivery and Tissue Engineering

Bio-inspired materials chemistry is an interdisciplinary field in which biological functions and structures are used as inspirations to construct a wide variety of new synthetic materials and devices. Peptide sequences that provide structural, mechanical, chemical, or biological function can be borrowed from nature and fused into synthetic poly(amino acid) chains without replicating the entire natural biomolecular sequence. Supramolecular self-assembly of such rationally designed peptidic sequences is emerging as a promising route to novel biofunctional materials. This chapter highlights recent progress in bio-inspired peptide and polypeptide hydrogels that have potential biomedical and pharmaceutical applications. The focus is on synthetic or biosynthetic poly(amino acid) hydrogels based on α-helical coiled-coils, β-sheets, dipeptides, peptide amphiphiles, elastin-like peptides, and on hybrids of organic polypeptides or polymers functionalized with peptides.