Fig. 7.

Schematic depiction of neuroinflammatory prevention induced by rhein hydrogel. Rhein is self-assembled by non-covalent interaction to form nanofibers with left-handed, which are further crosslinked to form 3D network structure. When treating inflammatory BV2 cells with rhien nanofibers, the nanofibers slowly depolymerize to release rhein or rhein aggregates. They intensively bind to MD-2 (the subunit of TLR4 receptor), obscure the active site of TLR4 and further block the access of the substrate, leading to the inhibition of NFκB activation. Subsequently, the rhein hydrogel suppresses the release of neuroinflammatory factors and mediators