Nanomaterials for drug delivery have become a hot issue in the field of modern medicine since the successful improvement of the physicochemical and biological properties to drugs. Among them, peptides, as an emerging class of building block for nanomedicine, have attracted an extensive research interest due to their excellent properties such as good biocompatibility, easy self-assembly and chemical diversities, which point out a new direction for researchers to construct the novel and intelligent drug delivery systems. Herein, we report that the self-assembly peptides are driven by the integrated roles of noncovalent forces, including hydrophobic interaction, hydrogen bonding, electrostatic interaction and π-π stacking, to form a variety of well-defined nanostructures, such as micelles, vesicles, nanospheres, nanofibers, nanotube, disc and so on. Furtherly, the basic concept of peptide drug conjugates (PDCs) and their advantages of high drug loading, high bioavailability and specific targeting are introduced. The research in recent years on the construction of PDCs nanomedicine for drug delivery based on the functional peptide is summarized. We mainly focus on the most recent five-year report to construct the smart drug delivery system with the multifunction involved in self-assembly, enhancing solubility, long-term acting, targeting, stimulating response and cell transmembrane function.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Self-assembling peptides
2.1 Classification of self-assembling peptides
2.2 The driving force of peptide assembly
3 Peptide drug conjugate for drug delivery system
3.1 Self-assembling peptide drug conjugates
3.2 Long-term acting peptide-drug conjugates
3.3 Targeting peptide drug conjugates
3.4 Responsive polypeptide drug conjugates
3.5 Transmembrane polypeptide drug conjugates
4 Conclusion