Peptoid-Based Mimics of Lung Surfactant Proteins

Peptoid-Based Mimics of Lung Surfactant Proteins 

There is a clinical need for non-natural, functional mimics of the lung surfactant (LS) proteins B and C (SP-B and SP-C), which could be used in a biomimetic LS replacement to treat respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) in premature infants [56]. An effective surfactant replacement must meet the following performance requirements (i) rapid adsorption to the air-liquid interface, (ii) re-spreadabihty 

Recently, peptoid-based mimics of both SP-C and SP-B have been designed to adopt helical secondary structures, and also mimic (to varying degrees) the sequence patterning of hydrophobic and polar residues found in the natural surfactant proteins. Peptoid-based SP-C mimics of up to 22 monomers in length, were synthesized and characterized by in vitro experimental methods [67, 68] (Fig. 1.8). The secondary structure of all molecules was assessed by circular dichroism and found to be helical. The surface activities of these peptoids, in comparison to the actual SP peptides described above, were characterized by surfactometry using 

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