Biofunctional nanorods in supramolecular thermoplastic elastomers

In designing new, synthetic scaffolds for soft tissue engineering applications, the biomaterials trinity of mech. compatibility, biodegradability and bioactivity should be fulfilled. For their good mech. properties, we focus on polyester based thermoplastic elastomers contg. either (4-ureido-butyl)-urea (U4U) or ureidopyrimidinone-hexyl-urea (UPy-U) units as the hard segment. In both materials, long, well defined nanorods are formed due to directed non-covalent interactions between the hard segments. By coupling biofunctional peptides to the U4U or UPy-U units, the peptides are incorporated in the nanorods after a simple mixing procedure with the corresponding polymer. This modular and supramol. approach was first studied in detail in model studies using unfunctionalized and dye-functionalized U4U units, revealing selective incorporation in the nanorods due to highly specific supramol. interactions. The approach was successfully extended for both U4U and UPy-U units to several functional peptide sequences and is currently applied in nephrol. research. [on SciFinder (R)]