Scientists from the U. of Granada, the CSIC Laboratory of Crystallographic Studies, GENYO and the U. of Edinburgh have designed a new material with numerous biotechnological applications which is of great interest for the pharmaceutical industry.
Scientists from the U. of Granada, the CSIC Laboratory of Crystallographic Studies, GENYO and the U. of Edinburgh have patented a new supramolecular hydrogel with numerous biotechnological applications which is of great interest for the pharmaceutical industry, since it opens new paths for the development of new more efficient medicaments.
After 18 months of multidisciplinary research, scientists have developed supramolecular hydrogels made up of small peptides (more specifically, cysteine peptides) which contain 99,9% water and 0,1% gel. This means that each molecule of dipeptide in this hydrogel is surrounded by 24.777 water molecules, which makes these gels totally biocompatible and biodegradable.
According to one of the authors of this research, Juan J. DíazMochón (UGR-GENYO), one of the great advantages of this new hydrogel is that it allows for the crystallization of proteins in 3D environments. “Protein crystallisation is essential to decipher key molecular interactions in physiological and pathological processes, and it is also an essential tool for the development of new medicaments”.
This new material “has allowed for the crystallisation of proteins—pure species from the stereochemical point of view—in our gels, which are also in turn not just stereochemically pure but which can now be prepared in pairs of specular images. Our work has demonstrated that this difference in composition is enough to provoke the formation of new polymorphs. Having different polymorphs at our disposal, with different crystalline arrangements of the same protein, facilitates the finding of new molecular interactions, and this is of great interest for the pharmaceutical industry.”
Prof.Mochón points out that the new hydrogels they have obtained “have proved to be not just an excellent way to obtain high quality protein crystals—which are necessary for the accurate determination of the 3D structure of a protein—but they have also facilitated the production of a polymorph from the glucose isomerase enzyme, a very difficult achievement.”
Cysteine supramolecular hydrogels (A) and their use as a medium for the crystallization of proteins.
Bibliography:
Influence of the chirality of short peptide supramolecular hydrogels in protein crystallogenesis
Mayte Conejero-Muriel, José A. Gavira, Estela Pineda-Molina, Adam Belsom,
Mark Bradley, Mónica Moral, Juan de Dios García-López Durán,Angélica Luque González, Juan J. Díaz-Mochón, Rafael Contreras-Montoya, Ángela Martínez-Peragón, Juan M. Cuerva and Luis Álvarez de Cienfuegos
Chemical Communications (IF 6.78)
Contact:
Juan José Díaz Mochón
Phone: +34 958 715 500 Ext 162
Email: juanjose.diaz@genyo.es
