A short oxazolidine-2-one containing peptide forms supramolecular hydrogels under controlled conditions

Low-molecular-weight hydrogels are made of a small percentage of small organic molecules dispersed in an aqueous medium, which may aggregate in several manners using different methods. However, often the organic gelator in water has poor solubility, so the addition of a solubilising agent is required. In the case of acidic gelators, this mainly consists of the addition of a strong base, that is sodium hydroxide, that deprotonates the acidic moiety, so the gelator molecules become more soluble and tend to assemble into micelles, forming a dispersion. Some gelators, however, are sensitive to the harsh pH and get hydrolysed. This is the case of some molecules presenting carbamates in their features, like Fmoc-protected or oxazolidinone-containing peptides. In this paper, we present a valid alternative to sodium hydroxide, by dissolving a tripeptide containing an oxazolidinone moiety in a phosphate buffer (PB) medium at pH 7.4. The results obtained with the NaOH dissolution are compared with the ones with PB, as both methods present advantages and drawbacks. The use of NaOH produces transparent but weak hydrogels, as it exposes the gelator to harsh conditions that end up in its partial hydrolysis, which is more pronounced at high concentrations (≥10 mM). Using PB to dissolve the gelator, this problem is completely avoided as no hydrolysis product has been detected in the hydrogels, which are very stiff although more opaque. By tuning the preparation conditions, we can obtain a wide variety of hydrogels, with the properties required by the final application.