Biomedical Functions of Keratin Peptide and its Applications

When wool was hydrolyzed by alkali, not only the disulfide bonds between protein chains were broken, but also some of peptide bonds were cut off to form small peptide fragments. The biomedical functions, the cytology and biological toxicity, the hemostatic efficacy of wool keratin peptide were evaluated by both cell and animal models. The wool keratin peptide can be used as a kind of natural raw materials for tissue engineering. The cell culturing results demonstrated that there is no toxicity for wool keratin peptide. It is biocompatible and can improve the cell viability to some extent. No death case was found for acute oral toxicity study and subacute oral toxicology study on mice. Histological analyses of organs in peptide treated mice for 30 days showed no difference when they were compared with controls. Moreover, it could shorten the bleeding time significantly. Furthermore, the cell affinities of poly(L-lactic acid) scaffold and membrane, polyethylene glycol hydrogel were increased after they were modified by wool keratin peptide. Keratin peptide and hydroxyapatite nanocomposites was also synthesized and introduced into the electrospun poly(L-lactic acid) fibrous membrane for continuous attraction on cell attachment and proliferation.