Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 33-35).The performance of a biological scaffold formed by the self-assembling peptide RADA16 is comparable to the most commonly used synthetic materials employed in the culture of neural stem cells. Furthermore, improvements in the performance of RADA16 have recently been made by appending the self-assembling peptide sequence with various functional motifs from naturally occurring proteins. The focus of this work is to further analyze the performance of these functionalized self-assembling peptide scaffolds when used for the culture of neural stem cells, and to characterize these newly developed materials for comparison with RADA16. The effect of the functional motifs on the structure of the peptide scaffold was evaluated with circular dichroism and scanning electron microscopy, and the mechanical properties of the peptide scaffolds were examined through theological analysis. The functionalized peptides were found to have lower percentages of beta-sheet structure as well as reduced storage moduli in comparison with RADA16. SEM images confirmed the ability of the functionalized peptides to form three-dimensional nanofiber scaffolds capable of encompassing, neural stem cells. Three-dimensional cell culture techniques were used to evaluate the ability of the functionalized peptide scaffolds to promote neural stem cell proliferation, and a scaffold formed by the combination of different functionalized peptides was found to increase the proliferation of neural stem cells in comparison to non-functionalized RADA 16.by Angus M. Hucknall.S.M
