Liu Runhui, Professor of East China University of science and technology research group: the effect of PEG anti adhesion layer on the regulation of cell behavior by functional peptides

Recently, the top journal of the American Chemical Society, titled "impact of antifouling peg layer on the performance of functional peptides in regulatingcell behaviors", reported an important breakthrough in the field of cell behavior regulation by Professor Liu Runhui, School of materials, East China University of science and Technology (DOI: 10.1021 / JACS 9b07105) ) The article was chosen as a cover article for recommendation (source: J Am Chem Soc.) with the aging of China 's population and the increasing concern and demand for human health, medical biomaterials have gradually become an important industry with rapid development in China It is estimated that the domestic market size will reach about 400 billion yuan by 2020 In order to solve the problem of "neck sticking" in high-end medical biomaterials, we need to deepen and strengthen the basic research, and solve the key scientific problems around the function of material surface interface The ideal biomedical biomaterial implanted into human body can regulate cell behavior through its surface interface, so as to promote tissue repair Functional peptides derived from living organisms can endow the surface with bioactivity and regulate cell behavior, so they are widely used in biomaterial research and application However, its function is affected by protein adsorption on the surface of the material and grafting chemistry on the surface of the polypeptide On the surface of the material modified by polypeptide, the function of cell regulation may show unsatisfactory or even deviate from the actual function, which seriously affects the function of the polypeptide and hinders the discovery of new functional polypeptide molecules In this study, we systematically explored the influence of PEG based anti-adhesion molecules on the regulatory function of bioactive polypeptide cells on the surface of materials It was found that PEG molecules with medium chain length can greatly reduce the background interference on the surface of materials, and can fully demonstrate the function of polypeptide Too short and too long PEG molecules are not conducive to display and optimize the cell regulatory function of peptides on the surface of materials Firstly, the functional peptides KRSR, YIGSR and vapg, which have specific adhesion to osteoblasts, endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells, were used to study and display the peptide function It was found that only the peg with medium chain length could show the selective adhesion of these peptides Then, by comparing the protein adsorption test with the grafting density of the polypeptide, the reason why the three PEG chain length molecules can resist the non-specific adsorption and support the function of the polypeptide was explained On this basis, the author further verified through cell migration and cell differentiation experiments Only when PEG molecules with the correct chain length are selected, the real effect of these functional peptides can be reflected, and it is conducive to further exploration of cell behavior This study reveals a long-standing but extremely important key problem in the field of biomaterial surface / interface, and explains the reasons, which will contribute to the research and application of medical biomaterials Professor Liu Runhui's research group focused on the core issues of surface / interface in the field of biomaterials research, systematically studied and established a universal surface active modification method for biomaterials, analyzed the dynamic chemistry of the surface, explored the interaction between the active surface and proteins, cells and microorganisms, and researched and developed new active medical biomaterials through the regulation of cell behavior (source: J am Chem SOC.) the first author of this paper is Chen Qi, a graduate student, and the corresponding author is Professor Liu Runhui The research was supported by the Ministry of science and technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.