Enzymatic Molecular Hydrogels: Design, Synthesis, and Applications as Bioactive Materials.

摘要

In this thesis work, I designed and synthesized a versatile hydrogelator precursor that can form a molecular hydrogel through the regulation of phosphatase and have the capability of incorporating various bioactive molecules into hydrogels for the application in biology and medicine. There are six chapters in the thesis. Chapter 1 gives a detailed review on the synthesis and application of enzyme-instructed molecular hydrogels based on peptide derivatives in the past decade; chapter 2 describes the screening of the best hydrogelator precursor among a series of novel peptidic hydrogelator precursors for enzymatic hydrogelation and demonstrates a simple method to functionalize this hydrogelator precursor with several bioactive molecules; chapter 3 reports the regulation of sol-gel transition of the hydrogelator precursor modified with azobenzene by phosphatase and UV/Vis light; chapter 4 demonstrates the first example of incorporating taxol into a molecular hydrogel for the controlled drug release without compromising the activity of the drug; chapter 5 illustrates a series of fluorescent hydrogelator precursors and their use as probes for the investigation of the intracellular hydrogelation in live cells; chapter 6 details a co-assembly strategy to study the intracellular hydrogelation via the technique CLEM (Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy). Overall, this thesis contributes to the development of molecular hydrogels for biological and medical applications.