"Assembly and Disassembly Control of Fiber-Forming Peptides for Tissue Engineering"

This event is sponsored by FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Department of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering.

Abstract: Fiber-forming peptides are useful materials as cell scaffolds. For three-dimensional cell culturing, peptide fibers with sufficient stiffness and durability are necessary. In addition, the degradability of the peptide fibers under biocompatible stimuli is required to recover cells and tissues after culture. Because of inherent incompatibility, it is highly challenging to develop fiber-forming peptides that satisfy both durability and degradability. Recently, our group has developed an original fiber-forming peptide, JigSAP, a jigsaw-shaped self-assembling peptide. JigSAP consists of iterative hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acid residues to afford amphiphilicity. At the hydrophobic side provided by the iterative structure, JigSAP has a characteristic AXXXA motif allowing for a unique dovetail packing and, in turn, fiber formation through B-sheet-type hydrogen bonding. Due to the well-organized assembly, JigSAP dispersed in a buffer at 1 wt% to afford a transparent hydrogel with extremely high stiffness as evaluated by a rheological analysis (G’ = 104-105 Pa).

Takahiro Muraoka

Professor

Institute of Global Innovation Research, Agriculture and Technology

Tokyo University

Speaker Bio: Takahiro Muraoka is a Professor at the Institute of Global Innovation Research, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT), where he leads a research group focused on supramolecular chemistry and biomaterials. He has held various academic positions at TUAT, including Associate Professor from February 2017 to November 2020, and Professor since December 2020. He is also a KISTEC Researcher, affiliated with the Kanagawa Institute of Industrial Science and Technology. Muraoka earned his Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng) and Master of Engineering (M.Eng) from The University of Tokyo, followed by a Ph.D. in Engineering from the same institution in 2007, working under Professor Aida. His research interests span organic synthesis, supramolecular chemistry, protein folding, photoresponsive molecules, amphiphiles, liposomes, ion channels, molecular machines, and peptides. He has conducted research on stimuli-responsive functional molecules, including the development of multi-block macrocycles and structured PEGs for protein stabilization.