Self-assembling peptide hydrogels: design, mechanisms, characterization, and biomedical applications

Self-assembled peptide hydrogels have emerged as a research frontier in biomedical engineering due to their exceptional water-retention capacity and spatiotemporal drug release kinetics. Researchers can fabricate biomaterials with customizable structures and tailored functionalities by precisely engineering peptide sequences, modulating molecular self-assembly pathways, orchestrating intermolecular interactions, and optimizing strategies for loading active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). These intelligent biomaterials demonstrate significant potential across diverse applications, including targeted drug delivery systems, new anti-cancer therapies, bioactive wound healing scaffolds, 3D cell culture matrices, and biosensing interfaces. This paper systematically reviews the latest breakthroughs in the rational design strategy, self-assembly mechanism, advanced characterization technology and artificial intelligence-assisted development of peptide hydrogels. The analysis of the structure-activity relationship between intermolecular interactions and macroscopic performance was performed. This review establishes a theoretical cognitive framework for a multi-scale self-assembly mechanism, providing theoretical guidance for developing a functional delivery system with precise drug loading characteristics and excellent biocompatibility and providing data support for their practical applications in clinical medicine.