Energy behaviour of Doxorubicin interacting with peptide nanotubes

Abstract

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Self-assembling cyclic peptide nanotubes are widely investigated in many scientific fields due to many of their properties; controllable sizes, stable, and simple formation. In this research, the cyclic peptide nanotubes are modelled as the carriers to interact with a drug molecule. On employing the Lennard-Jones function and the continuous approximation, the energy value of the system can be evaluated. The main outcome of this research is a mathematical expression describing the relation of energy, radii of drug and peptide and the spacing between peptide units. We find that the drug is most stable when it is in the spacing between subunits of the peptide nanotubes. We also consider the energy behaviour of an offset drug inside three different sizes of the cyclic peptide nanotubes. We predict that the drug can be encapsulated inside the peptide nanotube when the difference of their radii is around 3 Å.