A novel bioactive peptide: assessing its activity over murine neural stem cells and its potential for neural tissue engineering.

•The Phage Display technique allows us to find peptides binding neural stem cells.•The KLPGWSG peptide binds and enhances per se their neuronal differentiation.•We synthesized a self-assembling peptide functionalized with the KLPGWSG peptide.•We show that this scaffold enhances neural stem cells neuronal differentiation.•We found this effect at a stiffness level matching that of the brain in vivo.