Peptide Bionanomaterials - From Design to Application

Molecular self-assembly has been exploited by nature for developing the higher functional macromolecular structures of both the genome and proteome. Inspired by nature, there has been a surge of research, in the last two decades, for the molecular engineering of peptide-based self-assembling nanostructures, adopting the bottom-up design approach. 
This book gives the reader an overview on the design rules for de novo self-assembling peptide and reviews the diverse range of bioinspired peptide nanostructures such as ß-sheet and ß-hairpin, a-helical and coiled coil, self-assembling short peptides and peptidomimetics, collagen-based and elastin-like peptides, silk peptides, peptide amphiphiles, peptides co-polymers and others. The book also covers the wide variety of responsive and functional biomaterials that have been innovated based on those nanostructures for various applications ranging from tissue engineering, therapeutics and drug delivery to antimicrobial nanomaterials and biosensors. Finally, the book also discusses the peptide bionanomaterials global market and the future of the emerging industry.

Chapter 'Characterization of Peptide-Based Nanomaterials' is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Dr Mohamed Elsawy is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Leicester School of Pharmacy, De Montfort University and the team leader of the Peptide BioNanomaterials Group (PBNG). He obtained his PhD from School of Pharmacy at Queen's University of Belfast in 2012 followed by a short-term fellowship at University of Bordeaux in 2013 and an EPSRC funded postdoctoral training in University of Manchester between 2014-2017. In 2017, he was appointed a lectureship in Pharmaceutics at the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, then in 2020 he moved to the Leicester Institute for Pharmaceutical Innovation at Leicester School of Pharmacy, where he currently works. Dr Elsawy's research focus on understanding the fundamentals of peptide self-assembly into bio-inspired structures for the design of stable and responsive functional bionanomaterials for various biomedical and pharmaceutical applications, with particular interest in drug delivery and tissue engineering. Together with the rational bottom-up molecular design of peptide nanostructures, his group is currently working towards exploitation of various smart manufacturing technologies for the controlled design and fabrication of these materials.