Gudlur, SushanthSukthankar, PinakinGao, JianAvila, L. AdrianaHiromasa, YasuakiChen, JianhanIwamoto, TakeoTomich, John M.2012-11-082012-11-082012-09-18http://hdl.handle.net/2097/14919Citation: Gudlur S, Sukthankar P, Gao J, Avila LA, Hiromasa Y, Chen J, et al. (2012) Peptide Nanovesicles Formed by the Self-Assembly of Branched Amphiphilic Peptides. PLoS ONE 7(9): e45374. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045374Peptide-based packaging systems show great potential as safer drug delivery systems. They overcome problems associated with lipid-based or viral delivery systems, vis-a-vis stability, specificity, inflammation, antigenicity, and tune-ability. Here, we describe a set of 15 & 23-residue branched, amphiphilic peptides that mimic phosphoglycerides in molecular architecture. These peptides undergo supramolecular self-assembly and form solvent-filled, bilayer delimited spheres with 50–200 nm diameters as confirmed by TEM, STEM and DLS. Whereas weak hydrophobic forces drive and sustain lipid bilayer assemblies, these all-peptide structures are stabilized potentially by both hydrophobic interactions and hydrogen bonds and remain intact at low micromolar concentrations and higher temperatures. A linear peptide lacking the branch point showed no self-assembly properties. We have observed that these peptide vesicles can trap fluorescent dye molecules within their interior and are taken up by N/N 1003A rabbit lens epithelial cells grown in culture. These assemblies are thus potential drug delivery systems that can overcome some of the key limitations of the current packaging systems.en-USAttribution 3.0 United States (CC BY 3.0 US)Peptide-based packaging systemsDrug delivery systemsNanovesiclesArticle (publisher version)