Halloween is right around the corner, bringing an abundance of spooky decor, from carved pumpkins and fake skeletons to artificial webs. While these artificial webs are mostly used to scare trick-or-treaters, researchers have developed their own version of spider silk that could serve a much more practical purpose by aiding in wound recovery.
Spider silk is known for having remarkable strength and flexibility, so it’s looked at as an attractive material for medical purposes. While standard silk, farmed from silkworms, is simple to harness for mass production, webs from real spiders are hard to access because spiders are much like students looking for internships: territorial and prone to cannibalism. As such, artificial versions have been developed through the modification of the natural protein sequence using microbes.
However, producing artificial spider silk comes with its own set of challenges, because the silk’s yield is reduced by the proteins sticking together during production. To solve this issue, the research team led by Baoyang Lin and Bingbing Gao developed the artificial silk by implementing the use of peptides to prevent the artificial silk proteins from sticking to each other. These peptides allowed the proteins to fold into more orderly structures while remaining stable. With the proteins no longer sticking together as much, more usable silk was able to be produced.
An array of itsy-bitsy needles was attached to the nozzle of a 3D printer to make thin strands from the protein solution. These strands were then spun together into thicker fibers, similar to the process of wool being spun together to make the thread used for clothing. This setup functioned as an artificial spider to recreate the natural spinning process without needing any real spiders.
This new material was woven together into prototypes of wound dressings. The researchers used the dressings as substrates to test their use in a medical setting. Applying this to mice with rheumatoid arthritis and diabetic wounds showed promising results. The researchers observed improvements after two weeks in the arthritis experiments and 16 days in the diabetic wound healing experiments.
With the bandages being biocompatible and biodegradable, they appear to be promising for potential medical use. However, these results are currently limited to experiments conducted on mice, meaning further research would be needed before human use would be on the table. Nevertheless, the research demonstrates how a material typically associated with creepy crawlies could be repurposed from trick to treat.
