PNNL

Abstract

Substantial progress has been made in applying nanotubes in biomedical applications such as bioimaging and drug delivery due to their unique architecture characterized by very large internal surface areas and high aspect ratios. However, the biomedical applications of organic nanotubes, especially for those assembled from sequence-defined molecules, are very uncommon. In this paper, we reported the synthesis of two new peptoid nanotubes (PepTs1, PepTs2) by using sequence-defined and ligand-tagged peptoids as building blocks. These nanotubes are highly robust due to sharing the similar structure to those of non-tagged ones, and offer great potentials to hold guest molecules for biomedical applications. Our findings indicate that peptoid nanotubes loaded with doxorubicin drugs are promising candidates for targeted tumor cell imaging and chemo-photodynamic therapy.