초록 |
Artificial amphiphilic peptide building blocks are one of the most attractive candidates for tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and drug and gene delivery applications. And for medical-imaging modalities, the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents has been attracted in the field of clinical radiology. Herein we synthesized MR active peptide amphiphiles with pendant for chelating paramagnetic metal ions (Gd^(3+)) that can not only self-assemble into nanostructures such as spheres, fibrils and vesicles, but also encapsulate hydrophobic fluorescent dyes within the self-aggregate cores. Additionally we adopted octreotide to target specific cellular receptor (SSTR) overexpressed in tumor cells and have investigated the aqueous self-assembling behavior of MR agent-conjugated amphiphilic peptides. We believe that this approach presents a very attractive strategy to construct new generation of multifunctional nanoparticles for biomedical applications. |