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Updated: Mar 16, 2026

ECM Protein Nanofibers and Nanostructures Engineered Using Surface-initiated Assembly
Published on: April 17, 2014
Cell Environment-Differentiated Self-Assembly of Nanofibers
Zhen Zheng1, Peiyao Chen1, Maolin Xie1
1CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, †Department of Chemistry and ⊥Department of Polymer Science and Engineering and ‡Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China , 96 Jinzhai Road, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Abstract:
Employing cellular environment for the self-assembly of supramolecular nanofibers for biological applications has been widely explored. But using one precursor to differentiate the extra- and intracellular environments to self-assemble into two different nanofibers remains challenging. With the knowledge that the extracellualr environment of some cancer cells contains large amounts of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) while their intracellular environment is glutathione (GSH)-abundant in mind, we rationally designed a precursor Cys(SEt)-Glu-Tyr(H2PO3)-Phe-Phe-Gly-CBT (1) that can efficiently yield amphiphilic 2 and 2-D to self-assemble into two different nanofibers in hydrogels under the sequential treatment of ALP and GSH. We envision that, by employing a click condensation reaction, this work offers a platform for facilely postmodulation of supramolecular nanofibers, and the versatile precursor 1 could be used to kill two birds with one stone.
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