&lt;!--StartFragment--&gt;We use a shear-thinning, injectabl-solid, beta-hairpin peptide hydrogel with immediate rehealing behavior for sustained, local drug release after injection. The advantageous solid hydrogel shear-thinning and immediate rehealing rheological properties of the drug delivery vehicle result from the entangled and branched fibrillar nanostructure of the hydrogel networks. The intramolecular folding of individual peptides into a beta-hairpin conformation leads to consequent intermolecular peptide assembly to form nanofibrils underlying the hydrogel network. Hydrogel solution assembly is used to encapsulate drug payloads including vincristine, a common and highly effective chemotherapeutic that targets any replicating cells. Vincristine is highly effective at targeting cancerous cells at very low concentrations. However, in normal chemotherapy delievered systemically, large amounts of drug are used in order to best affect a targeted area resulting in many side effects. The hydrogel injectability allows for targeted specificity of the drug delivery throuhg injection, minimizing the need for invasive procedures or systemic side effects. Within the hydrogel, vincristine is protected from degradation by the local hydrogel environment and retains efficacy when released over time periods for over one month. Once encapsulated, vincristine is slowly and constantly released into the local injected area. This allows for the lowest amount of vincristine needed locally to effectively target the cancer while decreasing the adverse effects on healthy surrounding tissue. Characterization of the vincristine hydrogel construct is through tritiated vincristine release, TEM, confocal microscopy, and in vitro/in vivo methods. &lt;!--EndFragment--&gt;

Controlled localized drug release from an injectable-solid peptide hydrogel

249th National Meeting (2015)

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