Screening of the Non-Natural Antioxidant Peptide CVGVA and Its Application To Promote Burn Wound Healing

Oxidative damage is induced by reactive oxygen species, which leads to protein denaturation and subsequently triggers various diseases. Antioxidant peptides represent an effective approach for treating oxidative damage. In this study, a non-natural peptide library with antioxidant properties was designed. The effective antioxidant peptide CVAGVA was isolated from the peptide library through chromatographic and mass spectrometry analyses. The Fukui index and various chemical evaluation results indicated that CVAGVA was a more efficient antioxidant peptide. Experiments using a cell oxidative damage model confirmed that this peptide can effectively scavenge reactive oxygen species within cells and mitigate the damage effect. This article established models of sunburn, liver injury, keratitis, burns, etc. in mice. The results demonstrated that CVAGVA increased the treatment and recovery rate of sunburn by approximately 20% and enhanced the treatment effect of carbon tetrachloride-induced liver injury by approximately 16.7%. It can safeguard collagen in skin tissue and reduce the inflammatory response during long-term ultraviolet exposure. Regarding keratitis prevention, the recovery effect of CVAGVA was approximately 15% higher than that of glutathione. When CVAGVA was loaded onto zinc alginate hydrogel for burn treatment, the therapeutic effect was approximately 33.3% higher compared to the treatment without CVAGVA. These experiments have verified that the synthesized non-natural antioxidant peptides exhibit excellent antioxidant performance.