• (S)-indoline-2-carboxylic acid
• biomedical application
• conformational properties
• cross-linking degree
• hyaluronic acid
• PEGDE
• peptide mimetics
• reactivity
• rheology

The new challenges of modern biomedicine require a molecular approach to rationalize and enhance the properties of new materials for surgical applications or the discovery of new drugs for pharmacological use. A deeper understanding of the relationship between molecular structures and physicochemical properties is crucial. Therefore, two different research lines were pursued. The first one aimed to develop mimetics of natural peptides based on (S)-indoline-2-carboxylic acid ((2S)-Ind), focusing on the comprehension of (2S)-Ind reactivity with both α- and β-amino acids and the influence of (2S)-Ind on conformational properties of (2S)-Ind-containing hetero-sequences. The second part focused on a structure-property study for developing HA-based materials for aesthetic medicine application, using mono- and polydisperse poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ethers (PEGDEs) as cross-linkers, aiming to highlight the effect of the PEGDE chain length on the HA-based hydrogel properties.