Development of a crosslinkable biomimetic collagen for mimicry of molecular architecture, biological activity and applications

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to develop an enzymatically crosslinkable collagen-like biomaterial that not only structurally but also functionally resembles its natural counterpart. A series of self-assembling and template-assembled collagen-mimetic peptides (CMPs) have been successfully synthesized and characterized. The CMPs were found to exhibit collagen-like triple-helical conformation and cell-binding activity. To more closely mimic the biological function of collagen, we have also engineered a functional collagen-mimetic dendrimer that exhibits stable collagen-like molecular architecture with cell-binding activity, in addition to having substrate specificity for tissue transglutaminase-mediated crosslinking. It was observed that the integration of collagen-like structural domain and biologically relevant epitopes into the molecular design of a biomimetic collagen could be a promising approach for making its biological function and characteristic significantly closer to that of the natural collagen. This research may contribute to taking us one step forward in realizing an artificial protein that emulates the desired ECM characteristics.