Self-assembled peptide-based hydrogels are promising materials for biomedical research owing to biocompatibility and similarity to the extracellular matrix, amenable synthesis and functionalization and structural tailoring of the rheological properties. Wider developments of self-assembled peptide-based hydrogels in biomedical research and clinical translation are hampered by limited commercial availability allied to prohibitive costs.

In this work a focused library of Cbz-protected dehydrodipeptides Cbz-L-Xaa-Z-ΔPhe-OH (Xaa= Met, Phe, Tyr, Ala, Gly) was synthesised and evaluated as minimalist hydrogels. The Cbz-L-Met-Z-ΔPhe-OH and Cbz-L-Phe-Z-ΔPhe-OH hydrogelators were comprehensively evaluated regarding molecular aggregation and self-assembly, gelation, biocompatibility and as drug carriers for delivery of the natural compound curcumin and the clinically important antitumor drug doxorubicin. Drug release profiles and FRET studies of drug transport into small unilamellar vesicles (as biomembrane models) demonstrated that the Cbz-protected dehydropeptide hydrogels are effective nanocarriers for drug delivery. The expedite and scalable synthesis (in 3 steps), using commercially available reagents and amenable reaction conditions, makes Cbz-protected dehydrodipeptide hydrogels, widely available at affordable cost to the research community.

自组装的基于肽的水凝胶由于生物相容性和与细胞外基质的相似性，适宜的合成和功能化以及流变学特性的结构调整而成为有前途的生物医学研究材料。自组装的基于肽的水凝胶在生物医学研究和临床翻译中的更广泛的发展受到有限的商业供应和昂贵的成本的阻碍。

在这项工作中，合成了Cbz保护的脱氢二肽Cbz- L -Xaa- Z -ΔPhe-OH（Xaa = Met，Phe，Tyr，Ala，Gly）的聚焦文库，并将其评估为极简水凝胶。的CBZ-大号-Met- Ž -ΔPhe-OH和CBZ-大号-Phe- ž对-ΔPhe-OH凝胶剂进行了分子聚集和自组装，凝胶化，生物相容性以及作为天然化合物姜黄素和临床上重要的抗肿瘤药物阿霉素的药物载体的综合评估。药物释放曲线和将药物运输到小的单层囊泡中的FRET研究（作为生物膜模型）表明，Cbz保护的脱氢肽水凝胶是有效的纳米载体，可用于药物输送。利用可商购的试剂和合适的反应条件，快速且可扩展的合成（3个步骤）使得Cbz保护的脱氢二肽水凝胶能够以负担得起的价格广泛用于研究团体。