Thermoresponsive Self-Assembly of Short Elastin-Like Polypentapeptides and Their Poly(ethylene glycol) Derivatives

✍ Scribed by Michal Pechar; Jiří Brus; Libor Kostka; Čestmír Koňák; Martina Urbanová; Miroslav Šlouf

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 882 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1616-5187
• DOI: 10.1002/mabi.200600196

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Short polypeptides with four pentad repeats, (VPGVG)~4~ and (VPAVG)~4~, were synthesised by manual fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl/tert‐butyl (Fmoc/t‐Bu) solid phase peptide synthesis using a convergent approach. In the next step, the peptides were coupled via their N‐terminus with activated semi‐telechelic poly(ethylene glycol) O‐(N‐Fmoc‐2‐aminoethyl)‐O′‐(2‐carboxyethyl)undeca(ethylene glycol) (Fmoc–PEG–COOH) to yield monodisperse Fmoc‐PEG‐peptide diblock copolymer. Both the presence of the terminal hydrophobic Fmoc group and the hydrophilic PEG chain in the copolymers were shown to play a crucial role in their self‐associative behaviour, leading to reversible formation of supramolecular thermoresponsive assemblies. The peptides and their PEG derivatives were characterised by HPLC, NMR and MALDI‐TOF MS. The associative behaviour of the peptides and their PEG derivatives was studied by dynamic light scattering, MAS NMR and phase contrast microscopy.

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