A Novel Targeting Drug Delivery System Based on Self-Assembled Peptide Hydrogel

Abstract

In the last two decades, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) is widely used in clinical practice to inhibit the fibroblasts to proliferate and improve the success rate of glaucoma-filtering surgery, but 5-FU has many toxic effects to normal ocular tissues. The self-assembled peptide hydrogels may serve as a new class of biomaterials for applications including tissue engineering and drug delivery. How to deliver 5-FU quickly and precisely to the target sites of ocular tissue by a self-assembled peptide hydrogel remains unexplored. RGD (arginine-glycine-aspartic acid) sequence is cell attachment site in extracellular matrix (ECM). Thus, If the self-assembled peptide hydrogel containing the RGD sequence that act as a specific attachment site for the proliferated fibroblasts adhesion could be designed, after integrated 5-FU, a novel targeting drug delivery system will be put into practice in the future.