Webinar #11: Peptide Nanomaterials: Tissue Engineering and Immuno-Engineering Applications

Özet:

There has been considerable emphasis on nanotechnology in recent decades about the design of biomaterials and engineering of human tissues. This has increased awareness of bioengineers on physical and chemical aspects of the material - tissue interaction. Seeing the subject from the interface of sciences is a matter of infinite hope that may eventually bring necessary insights to treat incurable diseases. Accordingly, researchers try to uncover the physical and chemical principles that shape the output of “central dogma” and use that knowledge to develop more effective materials.

In this talk, I will give examples from my research, where chemical and physical signals were employed in the design of bioactive materials. In the first example, peptide-based nanofibers were evaluated as a tool for tissue engineering. Decorating nanofibers with simple chemical functional groups inspired from extracellular matrix molecules increased growth factor binding to nanofibers as well as new blood vessel formation. Several in vivo works demonstrated their potential in various tissue engineering settings, such as wound healing. In the second example, peptide nanofibers and nanospheres were considered as a carrier of pathogenic molecular patterns. I will show that immune response to these pathogenic signals differs significantly related to the shape of their carrier. As a result, the structure emerged has a potential to serve as a platform for vaccine design.