Toward potential supramolecular tissue engineering scaffolds based on guanosine derivatives

We report the synthesis and study of a new guanosine-based hydrogelator, 8-methoxy-2′,3′,5′-tri-O-acetylguanosine, that can not only gel aqueous solutions at biologically relevant salt concentrations, but can also gel cell media. Studies suggest that this hydrogelator forms helical assemblies, rather than the macrocyclic quartet assemblies commonly found in guanosine hydrogels, which allow it to form hydrogels at as low as 0.5 wt% in 100mM NaCl. Furthermore, we show that this gelator is non-toxic to cells, injectable and that by simply mixing with 2′,3′,5′-tri-O- acetylguanosine, we can systematically vary the modulus and shear sensitivity of the gel over orders of magnitude.