Silk Polymers and Nanoparticles: A Powerful Combination for the Design of Versatile Biomaterials

Abstract

Silk fibroin (SF) is a natural protein largely used in the textile industry but also in biomedicine, catalysis, and other materials applications. SF is biocompatible, biodegradable, and possesses high tensile strength. Moreover, it is a versatile compound that can be formed into different materials at the macro, micro- and nano-scales, such as nanofibers, nanoparticles, hydrogels, microspheres, and other formats. Silk can be further integrated into emerging and promising additive manufacturing techniques like bioprinting, stereolithography or digital light processing 3D printing. As such, the development of methodologies for the functionalization of silk materials provide added value. Inorganic nanoparticles (INPs) have interesting and unexpected properties differing from bulk materials. These properties include better catalysis efficiency (better surface/volume ratio and consequently decreased quantify of catalyst), antibacterial activity, fluorescence properties, and UV-radiation protection or superparamagnetic behavior depending on the metal used. Given the promising results and performance of INPs, their use in many different procedures has been growing. Therefore, combining the useful properties of silk fibroin materials with those from INPs is increasingly relevant in many applications. Two main methodologies have been used in the literature to form silk-based bionanocomposites: in situ synthesis of INPs in silk materials, or the addition of preformed INPs to silk materials. This work presents an overview of current silk nanocomposites developed by these two main methodologies. An evaluation of overall INP characteristics and their distribution within the material is presented for each approach. Finally, an outlook is provided about the potential applications of these resultant nanocomposite materials.

Biomedical applications of silkworm ( Bombyx Mori ) proteins in regenerative medicine (a narrative review)

“…Also, anti-cancer, anti-tyrosinase, anti-coagulant, antioxidant, anti-bacterial, and biocompatibility properties of silk sericin protein were obtained after degumming. Silk-based scaffolds are being studied for use in a variety of tissue engineering applications, such as bone, nerve, skin, cartilage, and corneal regeneration, as well as drug delivery vehicles (Figure 4; Abbasian et al, 2019;Belda Marin et al, 2020).…”

Layer-by-Layer assembled nano-drug delivery systems for cancer treatment

“…Although the research on gene multilayer film mainly focuses on DNA, there are also reports on RNA functionalized multilayer film (Freund et al., 2012 ). Some growth factors such as BMP, VEGF and hydrophilic functional short peptides can also be incorporated into multilayer membranes by this method (Etienne et al., 2006 ; van den Beucken et al., 2007 ; Belda Marín et al., 2020 ; Rangel et al., 2021 ).…”

Silk Fibroin: A Promising Tool for Wound Healing and Skin Regeneration

“…To construct a novel array of silk fibroin-based biomaterials for treatment of different types of wound healing, further study is required to investigate the mechanistic basis for silk fibroin on the wound. According to Belda Marin et al [111] in a review, the behaviour of the biomaterials with ageing and liberating the inorganic phase is detrimental to find out the long-term stability of the scaffolds. Furthermore, more studies on the interaction between organic and inorganic phase is warranted.…”