| abstract |
Polypeptides consisting essentially of from about 10 to about 60 amino acid residues having alternating hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acid residue regions are useful as pulmonary surfactants when admixed with a pharmaceutically acceptable phospholipid. The polypeptides may be represented by the formula (ZaUb)cZd, wherein: Z is a hydrophilic amino acid residue independently selected from R, D, E and K; U is a hydrophobic amino acid residue independently selected from V, I, L, C, Y and F; a has an average value of about 1 to about 5; b has an average value of about 3 to about 20; c is 1 to 10; and d is 0 to 3.y of |