Synthetic Collagen-like Polymer That Undergoes a Sol–Gel Transition Triggered by O–N Acyl Migration at Physiological pH

We previously reported an artificial collagen gel that can be used as a cell-culture substrate by end-to-end cross-linking of collagen-like triple-helical peptides via disulfide bonds. However, the gel had to be formed a priori by polymerizing the peptide in an acidic solution containing dimethyl sulfoxide for several days, which prevented its use as an injectable gel or three-dimensional (3D) scaffold for cell culture. In this study, we developed a collagen-like peptide polymer by incorporating an O–N acyl migration-triggered triple helix formation mechanism into a collagen-like peptide, which formed a gel within 10 min. We demonstrated that the collagen-like peptide polymer can be used as a 3D cell scaffold and that the 3D structure formation of cells can be controlled by collagen-derived bioactive sequences introduced into the peptide sequence.