Title
pH-sensitive peptide hydrogel for glucose-responsive insulin delivery
Author
Xue Li, Mian Fu, Jun Wu, Chenyu Zhang, Xin Deng, Arvind Dhinakar, Wenlong Huang, Hai Qian, Liang Ge
Year
2017
Journal
Acta Biomaterialia
Abstract
Glucose-responsive system is one of important options for self-regulated insulin delivery to treat diabetes, which has become an issue of great public health concern in the world. In this study, we developed a novel and biocompatible glucose-responsive insulin delivery system using a pH-sensitive peptide hydrogel as a carrier loaded with glucose oxidase, catalase and insulin. The peptide could self-assemble into hydrogel under physiological conditions. When hypoglycemia is encountered, neighboring alkaline amino acid side chains are significantly repulsed due to reduced local pH by the enzymatic conversion of glucose into glucoinc acid. This is followed by unfolding of individual hairpins, disassembly and release of insulin. The glucose-responsive hydrogel system was characterized on the basis of structure, conformation, rheology, morphology, acid-sensitivity and the amount of consistent release of insulin in vitro and vivo. The results illustrated that our system can not only regulate the blood glucose levels in vitro but also in mice models having STZ-induced diabetes.
Instrument
J-810
Keywords
Circular dichroism, Secondary structure, Biochemistry