The Biomedical Use of Silk: Past, Present, Future

Abstract

Humans have long appreciated silk for its lustrous appeal and remarkable physical properties, yet as the mysteries of silk are unraveled, it becomes clear that this outstanding biopolymer is more than a high‐tech fiber. This progress report provides a critical but detailed insight into the biomedical use of silk. This journey begins with a historical perspective of silk and its uses, including the long‐standing desire to reverse engineer silk. Selected silk structure–function relationships are then examined to appreciate past and current silk challenges. From this, biocompatibility and biodegradation are reviewed with a specific focus of silk performance in humans. The current clinical uses of silk (e.g., sutures, surgical meshes, and fabrics) are discussed, as well as clinical trials (e.g., wound healing, tissue engineering) and emerging biomedical applications of silk across selected formats, such as silk solution, films, scaffolds, electrospun materials, hydrogels, and particles. The journey finishes with a look at the roadmap of next‐generation recombinant silks, especially the development pipeline of this new industry for clinical use.

Rapid Photocrosslinking of Silk Hydrogels with High Cell Density and Enhanced Shape Fidelity

“…The most extensively utilized silk fibroin is isolated from the domesticated Bombyx mori silkworm species, which has both a low inflammatory profile and cytotoxicity . It is currently predominantly used in the clinic as a surgical suture and an absorbable surgical mesh …”

Microfluidic-assisted silk nanoparticle tuning

“…The manufactured silk nanoparticles were then added, frozen, and lyophilized overnight. The tubes containing the resulting freeze-dried silk nanoparticles were weighed again (W2) to determine the amount of silk nanoparticles and overall yield eqn (1).…”

“…2 Silk is consistently viewed as a promising biopolymer for biomedical applications across a broad range of applications. 1 Silk has several important and exploitable characteristics, including (i) excellent mechanical properties, (ii) a long-term track record of its safe use in humans, (iii) broad biocompatibility and biodegradability, (iv) mild aqueous processing conditions, and (v) the ability to stabilize and protect therapeutic payloads (e.g., proteins and small molecular drugs). 3,4 In addition, a reversed engineered silk solution can be processed into numerous material formats, including hydrogels, scaffolds, lms, microspheres, and nanoparticles (reviewed in 5,6 ).…”

Recent Advances in Silk Sericin/Calcium Phosphate Biomaterials

“…In this context silk is a valuable alternative due to its excellent intrinsic properties such as non-toxicity, biodegradability, self-assembly, mechanical stability and controllable structure (Altman et al, 2003;Ha et al, 2013). In nature, silk-like proteins are produced by several organisms such as silkworms, spiders, mollusks, scorpions, bees, and ants (Holland et al, 2019). The use of silk from the domesticated silkworm Bombyx mori is well-established as suitable for biomedical applications due to its abundance, batch-to-batch stability, and clinical track record (Ude et al, 2014).…”