Designer self-assembling peptide nanomaterials

Summary Short peptides that are made of natural amino acids were never seriously considered as useful materials as recent as 16 years ago. However, the discovery of a class of self-assembling peptides that spontaneously undergo self-organization into well-ordered structures resulted in a conceptual change. Since then diverse classes of short peptides have been invented with broad applications including 3D tissue cell culture, reparative and regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, slow drug release, stabilization of membrane proteins to develop nanobiotechnology and molecular devices. Furthermore one of the self-assembling peptides has shown promise not only to slow down prion infection, but also to extend ∼50% animal life. Molecular design using short peptides as new materials may play increasingly important role in nanoscience, nanotechnology, nanobiotechnology and nanomedicine.