ABSTRACT
Soft matters such as supramolecular gels are of great interest for several biomedical applications, including tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and drug delivery. Gels are soft materials displaying a broad range of structures and properties according to the nature of the gelling agent(s) called gelator(s). Low-molecular-weight hydrogels, which are stabilized by small molecules such as nucleoside-based gelators, belong to the family of physical gels. The morphology of the supramolecular structures obtained by nucleoside lipid–based molecules is routinely investigated by electron microscopies: transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Anionic nucleolipids can be synthesized as 3'-O-alkyl or di-acylnucleotides by using a phosphoramidite synthetic approach. In the design of nonionic nucleolipids, the replacement of the phosphate moiety by a neutral but hydrophilic moiety was necessary to maintain the amphiphilic properties of the molecules. A wide range of molecules are designed on the basis of a nucleobase conjugated with sugar/phosphate moieties and lipidic chains.
