Self-assembly behaviors of peptide-drug conjugates: influence of multiple factors on aggregate morphology and potential self-assembly mechanism

Peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs) as self-assembly prodrugs have the unique and specific features to build one-component nanomedicines. Supramolecular structure based on PDCs could form various morphologies ranging from nanotube, nanofiber, nanobelt to hydrogel. However, the assembly process of PDCs is too complex to predict or control. Herein, we investigated the effects of extrinsic factors on assembly morphology and the possible formation of nanostructures based on PCDs. To this end, we designed a PDC consisting of hydrophobic drug (S)-ketoprofen (Ket) and valine-glutamic acid dimeric repeats peptide (L-VEVE) to study their assembly behavior. Our results showed that the critical assembly concentration of Ket-L-VEVE was 0.32 mM in water to form various nanostructures which experienced from micelle, nanorod, nanofiber to nanoribbon. The morphology was influenced by multiple factors including molecular design, assembly time, pH and hydrogen bond inhibitor. On the basis of experimental resu...