Recombinant Silk Hydrogel as a Novel Dermal Filler Component: Preclinical Safety and Efficacy Studies of a New Class of Tissue Fillers.

Background: Hyaluronic acid-based tissue fillers are commonly utilized in reconstructive surgery as well as for aesthetic augmentation. A new type of recombinant silk-based tissue filler might pose a beneficial alternative for surgeons and patients.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare injectability, reshaping, tolerability, and postimplantation behavior of dermal filler preparations containing recombinant silk hydrogel with a commercially available hyaluronic acid filler in 2 different animal models.

Recombinant spider silk-based bioinks.

Bioinks, 3D cell culture systems which can be printed, are still in the early development stages. Currently, extensive research is going into designing printers to be more accommodating to bioinks, designing scaffolds with stiff materials as support structures for the often soft bioinks, and modifying the bioinks themselves. Recombinant spider silk proteins, a potential biomaterial component for bioinks, have high biocompatibility, can be processed into several morphologies and can be modified with cell adhesion motifs to enhance their bioactivity.

Foams Made of Engineered Recombinant Spider Silk Proteins as 3D Scaffolds for Cell Growth.

Materials for tissue engineering have to be biocompatible and have to support cell adhesion, proliferation and differentiation. Additionally, in case of soft tissue engineering the mechanical properties have to accommodate that of the tissue with mechanical integrity until the artificial scaffold is replaced by natural extracellular matrix. In case of artificial 3D scaffolds, it is of critical importance to be able to tune the mechanical properties, the inner free volume (i.

Biofabrication of cell-loaded 3D spider silk constructs.

Biofabrication is an emerging and rapidly expanding field of research in which additive manufacturing techniques in combination with cell printing are exploited to generate hierarchical tissue-like structures. Materials that combine printability with cytocompatibility, so called bioinks, are currently the biggest bottleneck. Since recombinant spider silk proteins are non-immunogenic, cytocompatible, and exhibit physical crosslinking, their potential as a new bioink system was evaluated.

Processing of recombinant spider silk proteins into tailor-made materials for biomaterials applications.

Spider silk has extraordinary mechanical properties, is biocompatible and biodegradable, and therefore an ideal material for biomedical applications. However, a drawback for any application is the inhomogeneity of spider silk, as seen for other natural materials, as well as the low availability due to the cannibalism of most spiders. Recently, developed recombinant spider silk proteins ensure constant material properties, as well as scalable production, and further the processing into morphologies other than fibres.

Engineering multiple biological functional motifs into a blank collagen-like protein template from Streptococcus pyogenes.

Bacterially derived triple-helical, collagen-like proteins are attractive as potential biomedical materials. The collagen-like domain of the Scl2 protein from S. pyogenes lacks any specific binding sites for mammalian cells yet possesses the inherent structural integrity of the collagen triple-helix of animal collagens.

Controlled hydrogel formation of a recombinant spider silk protein.

Due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and low immunogenicity, recombinant spider silk proteins have a high potential for a variety of applications when processed into morphologies such as films, capsules, beads, or hydrogels. Here, hydrogels made of the engineered and recombinantly produced spider silk protein eADF4(C16) were analyzed in detail. It has previously been shown that eADF4(C16) nanofibrils self-assemble by a mechanism of nucleation-aggregation, providing the basis of silk hydrogels.