Self-assembling peptides as bioactive coatings

Bioactive coatings are designed to regulate interfacial interactions between biomaterials and host tissues, and represent an important strategy for improving the anti-infective capacity, immunomodulation, and tissue integration of biomaterials. However, current bioactive coatings still face challenges in precise molecular design, long-term interfacial retention, and functional maintenance under complex physiological conditions. Self-assembling peptides (SAPs), owing to their sequence programmability, supramolecular assembly capability, modular functional integration, and environmental responsiveness, provide a versatile platform for constructing designable and controllable bioactive coatings. This review systematically summarizes the unique advantages of SAPs in bioactive coating construction and discusses their design logic from three key dimensions: peptide sequence design, assembly behavior, and interfacial presentation. Recent advances in SAP-based coatings are further reviewed in the contexts of anti-infection and mineralization protection, inflammatory microenvironment modulation, tissue-specific integration, and regenerative repair. Finally, the key issues limiting their precise design and clinical translation are analyzed, including interfacial retention under physiological conditions, the balance between assembly stability and functional motif exposure, and the maintenance of durable coating functions in complex interfacial environments. Overall, SAP-based coatings are evolving from passive surface-modification materials into programmable, functionally tunable, and mechanistically interpretable biointerfaces, offering new perspectives for the development of next-generation biomedical materials.