In this HOT article, Dave Smith, Sabrina Pricl and co-workers report the synthesis of 4 different RGD-peptide derivatives, which spontaneously self-assemble into nanoscale architectures. They used multiscale modelling to understand the self-assembly of these ligands and they demonstrated that by modifying the building blocks through organic synthesis on the molecular scale, they could control the morphology of the resulting self-assembled nanostructures. The multivalent binding of the assemblies to integrin proteins was shown to be highly dependent on the morphology of the assemblies. The paper elegantly showcases the importance of nanoscale morphology on binding events and highlights the advantages of employing a self-assembly approach.
Self-assembled multivalent RGD-peptide arrays – morphological control and integrin binding
Daniel J. Welsh, Paola Posocco, Sabrina Pricl and David K. Smith
DOI: 10.1039/c3ob00034f
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