Novel Electrospun-Knitted Silk Scaffolds for Ligament Tissue Engineering

Fabrication of elastomeric silk fibers

“…Upon fabrication, these fibers can be used for bottom‐up assembly for 3D scaffolds via weaving, braiding, or knitting . Many polymers have been used in the above fabrication methods, including silk, collagen, cellulose, polylactic acid, poly(lactic‐ co ‐glycolic acid), polycaprolactone, acrylamine poly(ethylene glycol), polyglycolide, and poly(L/DL lactide) …”

Functional Material Features of Bombyx mori Silk Light versus Heavy Chain Proteins

“…Due to its unique properties, there is increasing interest in silk for biological applications . Silk already has a long history in biomaterial applications, as it has been used as a surgical suture material successfully for decades and more recently has also been introduced into other biomaterials applications such as tissue engineering scaffolds − and drug delivery. − …”

“…Heavy chain fibroin is very different from the light chain fibroin, and the structural differences in both types of silk proteins affect the physical properties of the individual materials, and although the heavy chain character dominates in terms of composition (by mass), the behavior of the total silk is significantly modified by the presence of the light chain component. Fabrication of materials from silk has been attempted by many methods such as gelation, casting, and fiber spinning, but recently, and due to the polymeric nature of the natural silk, many researchers − ,− have used electrospinning to generate nanofibrous silk-based materials for biomedical applications. The most crucial parameters for silk electrospinning are the viscosity of the electrospinning dope, voltage supplied, collection plate distance, and nature of solvent.…”

Silk–Silica Composites from Genetically Engineered Chimeric Proteins: Materials Properties Correlate with Silica Condensation Rate and Colloidal Stability of the Proteins in Aqueous Solution

“…Over the years these materials have become more sophisticated with biocompatibility and bioacceptance being important. Silks provide a valuable natural source of biomaterials that can be fabricated into differing physical forms including fibers, films, and gels for physiological applications for controlled release − and as tissue engineering constructs. − In addition to being well tolerated biologically, − silk has many physical properties which are highly valued such as its elasticity and tensile strength. − In the past 20 years there has been growing interest in understanding the properties of silks with a view to generating new materials based on spider silks and bioengineered variants of silkworm and spider silks . Although spiders produce a wide range of silks having different functions such as protection for the lining the egg case (aciniform silk), some are more glue-like (pyriform and aggregate silks) while others have a more structural role such as the major and minor ampullate silks used in the web and draglines; none have been commercialized due to the difficulty of domestication of the cannibalistic Araneae.…”