It’s nearly that time of year again—time to pull out the Halloween decorations and deck the halls with all sorts of eerie items, including the ever-popular polyester spider webs. Interestingly, scientists have created their own version of artificial spider silk, made from proteins that promote healing rather than instilling fear. This synthetic silk is durable enough to be fashioned into bandages which have shown promise in treating joint injuries and skin lesions in mice.
It’s nearly that time of year again—time to pull out the Halloween decorations and deck the halls with all sorts of eerie items, including the ever-popular polyester spider webs. Interestingly, scientists have created their own version of artificial spider silk, made from proteins that promote healing rather than instilling fear. This synthetic silk is durable enough to be fashioned into bandages which have shown promise in treating joint injuries and skin lesions in mice
Spider silk is among the strongest natural materials known, exceeding steel in strength for its weight. However, harvesting it is quite difficult since spiders are territorial and known to eat one another, making them unsuitable for farming like silkworms. As a result, researchers have turned to synthetic methods. One approach involves engineering microbes to produce the spider silk proteins, but this has proven difficult as the proteins often clump together, diminishing the yield. To address this, Bingbing Gao and his team aimed to alter the natural protein sequences, creating a spider silk that was easier to spin while remaining stable, using microbes.
The researchers began by engineering microbes to produce the silk proteins while also incorporating additional peptides. These new peptides, modeled after patterns found in amyloid polypeptides, helped the artificial silk proteins to arrange themselves neatly when folded and prevented them from clinging together in solution, thus improving yield. By employing an array of tiny, hollow needles linked to a 3D printer nozzle, the team pulled the protein solution into fine strands in mid-air, spinning them into thicker fibers. This method resembled a large artificial spider crafting its web.
Next, they created prototype wound dressings from their artificial silk fibers, which were tested on mice suffering from osteoarthritis and chronic wounds related to diabetes. The dressings allowed for easy integration of drug treatments, and the results showed enhanced wound healing compared to standard bandages. Specifically, mice with osteoarthritis experienced reduced swelling and improved tissue repair after just two weeks, while diabetic mice with skin lesions treated with a similar dressing showed significant healing after 16 days. These new silk-based bandages are both biocompatible and biodegradable, indicating potential for future medical use.
The authors express their gratitude for the support received from the National Key R & D Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province, the Nanjing Tech University Teaching Reform Project, the Discipline Fund from the Nanjing Tech University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the Cultivation Program aimed at Excellent Doctoral Dissertations at Nanjing Tech University.
