Technology
Silk – a biomaterial for the future
Silk from the common silk worm Bombyx mori has been used for textile production since ancient times. The silk worm builds its entire cocoon from one single fiber of a length of several hundred meters. This fiber has a very high tensile strength due to the β-sheet structure of its main protein component called fibroin. Thus textile silk derived from Bombyx mori cocoons has unique mechanical properties compared to other textile fibers. However, if silk is used as a material in medical implants, the antigenic sericin layer, which encases and protects the two fibroin core filaments has to be removed.
Novel and proprietary silk technology for human medical use.
Traditional methods either do not completely remove sericin or lead to substantial degradation of the fibroin fibers, thus reducing the mechanical stability of the fibers. Therefore silk in medical use has been limited to textile structures of low complexity such as plain meshes.
The MorphoMed technology is based on a patented mild purification process, which quantitatively removes the sericin layer around the two fibroin filaments of silk – even in highly complex 3D textile engineered structures. Based on this technology, complex structures like our lead product RegACL can be manufactured safely and easily, thus enhancing the field of application for silk in medical implant technology.
Image: fibroin filaments of silk with partly removed sericin layer.
