Molecular Studies of Peptide Assemblies and Related Applications in Tumor Therapy and Diagnosis

Peptides and proteins are known to form a variety of aggregate forms via assembling processes with significant dependence on sequences, which is characteristic for amyloid-like structures. Such peptides could be explored as diagnostic probes targeting tumor antigens. Nanostructured peptide aggregates have been shown to improve the binding affinity and selectivity to the tumor-associated antigens, and can also enhance the antitumor efficacy. The insight of the aggregation and assembly propensities of peptide and protein structures could provide a basis for developing diagnosis and therapeutics for a variety of diseases. An important subject under study is the formation mechanism of peptide assemblies at the level of individual amino acids. This effort could lead to the insight of assembly propensity of peptide molecules. In this chapter, we will review the representative progress on studying aggregation propensity of peptides based on the high-resolution structural analysis of peptide assemblies. It will be presented that these efforts could advance our insight into the peptide assembly mechanisms, as well as provide potential venues for developing peptide-aggregate-based tumor therapeutic strategies.