Bioactive peptide based supramolecular hydrogel as an efficient drug/cell delivery platform for ophthalmic...

In this work, we reported the generation of a bioactive peptide based supramolecular hydrogel as platform for efficient cell and drug delivery for ophthalmic application. The supramolecular hydrogelator was composed of a self-assembly motif (i.e., NapFF) and a biofunctional moiety (i.e., RGD) using glycine (G) as a linker. Self-assembly behavior of amphiphiles could be finely tuned by the number of glycine, and the optimized NapFFGGRGD amphiphile could self-assemble into supramolecular hydrogel in aqueous solution after a heating-cooling procedure. The formed hydrogel was thoroughly characterized by transmissionelectronmicroscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and a rheometer. The proposed NapFFGGRGD hydrogel exhibits great in vitro stability upon incubation in cell culture medium for 7 days and supports human corneal epithelial cells (HCECs) proliferation in both 2D and 3D culture models. Both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs (i.e., curcumin, vancomycin hydrochloride) could be readily encapsulated into the NapFFGGRGD hydrogel without compromising their pharmacological activities. Using a rat model of bacterial keratitis (BK), we evidently demonstrated that vancomycin loaded NapFFGGRGD hydrogel (Van/NapFFGGRGD) effectively cured BK by the elimination of invaded bacteria and the promotion of corneal re-epithelization. As a result, the developed NapFFGGRGD supramolecular hydrogel might be a promising platform for efficient ophthalmic cell/drug delivery.