Injectable silk foams for soft tissue regeneration.

Soft tissue fillers are needed for restoration of a defect or augmentation of existing tissues. Autografts and lipotransfer have been under study for soft tissue reconstruction but yield inconsistent results, often with considerable resorption of the grafted tissue. A minimally invasive procedure would reduce scarring and recovery time as well as allow the implant and/or grafted tissue to be placed closer to existing vasculature.

Silk as a biocohesive sacrificial binder in the fabrication of hydroxyapatite load bearing scaffolds.

Limitations of current clinical methods for bone repair continue to fuel the demand for a high strength, bioactive bone replacement material. Recent attempts to produce porous scaffolds for bone regeneration have been limited by the intrinsic weakness associated with high porosity materials. In this study, ceramic scaffold fabrication techniques for potential use in load-bearing bone repairs have been developed using naturally derived silk from Bombyx mori.

The use of silk-based devices for fracture fixation.

Metallic fixation systems are currently the gold standard for fracture fixation but have problems including stress shielding, palpability and temperature sensitivity. Recently, resorbable systems have gained interest because they avoid removal and may improve bone remodelling due to the lack of stress shielding. However, their use is limited to paediatric craniofacial procedures mainly due to the laborious implantation requirements.

Non-equilibrium silk fibroin adhesives.

Regenerated silkworm silk solutions formed metastable, soft-solid-like materials (e-gels) under weak electric fields, displaying interesting mechanical characteristics such as dynamic adhesion and strain stiffening. Raman spectroscopy, in situ electric field dynamic oscillatory rheology and polarized optical microscopy indicated that silk fibroin electrogelation involved intermolecular self-assembly of silk molecules into amorphous, micron-scale, micellar structures and the formation of relatively long lifetime, intermicellar entanglement crosslinks. Overall, the electrogelation process did not require significant intramolecular beta-strand or intermolecular beta-sheet formation, unlike silk hydrogels.