2022, Vol. 26 ›› Issue (10): 1625-1630

Research progress on the application of self-assembled peptides in endodontics and periodontitis

Huang Lan, Wang Qin, Ge Song   

Abstract: BACKGROUND: With the more and more in-depth study of self-assembled peptides, it is considered to be a potential biomaterial because of its non-toxicity and good biocompatibility, which provides an application prospect for the treatment of stomatology in the future.
OBJECTIVE: To review the application of self-assembled peptides in the field of endodontics and periodontitis, as well as the challenges and trends that may be faced in the future.
METHODS: Chinese and English search words were “self-assembling peptides, periodontal disease, dental pulp stem cells, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, dental pulp-cytology”. The related articles about self-loading peptides were searched on CNKI, Wanfang and PubMed. The retrieval time was from 2005 to 2021. Finally, 63 articles were selected by abstract search, and systematically summarized, and analyzed to comprehensively describe the new progress and challenges of self-loaded peptides in the field of stomatology.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) Self-assembled peptides are a kind of biological nanomaterials in which amino acid molecules assemble spontaneously and reversibly through intramolecular/intermolecular interactions. (2) A large number of experimental studies have shown that self-assembled peptides as a scaffold can promote cell proliferation, differentiation, migration and production of extracellular matrix components and induce angiogenesis, which is widely used in dental pulp and periodontal tissue regeneration. (3) However, at present, there are still some shortcomings, such as the variability of stability in different states, lack of mechanical properties, and uncertain immunogenicity, which suggests that we should focus more on how to enhance the stability of the structure in future research, improve mechanical strength and design more functional self-assembled peptide scaffolds. (4) At this stage, a large number of basic researches tend to show that the combination of self-assembled peptides and dental pulp stem cells has more tissue regeneration and osteogenesis capabilities than dental pulp stem cells alone. (5) Because self-assembled peptide has its own stability disadvantages, the long-term efficacy applied to the clinic still needs more clinical trials to confirm, but this does not prevent it from becoming the focus of future research, and it opens up a new way for the treatment strategy in the field of dental pulp periodontology.

Key words:self-assembled peptides, periodontal regeneration, scaffolds, dental pulp stem cells, extracellular matrix, amino acids, guided tissue regeneration, review