Due to its excellent biological and mechanical properties, silk fibroin has been intensively explored for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. However, lack of translational evidence has hampered its clinical application for tissue repair. Here a silk fibroin film is developed and its translational potential is investigated for skin repair by performing comprehensive preclinical and clinical studies to fully evaluate its safety and effectiveness. The silk fibroin film fabricated using all green chemistry approaches demonstrates remarkable characteristics, including transmittance, fluid handling capacity, moisture vapor permeability, waterproofness, bacterial barrier properties, and biocompatibility. In vivo rabbit full-thickness skin defect study shows that the silk fibroin film effectively reduces the average wound healing time with better skin regeneration compared with the commercial wound dressings. Subsequent assessment in porcine model confirms its long-term safety and effectiveness for full-thickness skin defects. Finally, a randomized single-blind parallel controlled clinical trial with 71 patients shows that the silk fibroin film significantly reduces the time to wound healing and incidence of adverse events compared to commercial dressing. Therefore, the study provides systematic preclinical and clinical evidence that the silk fibroin film promotes wound healing thereby establishing a foundation towards its application for skin repair and regeneration in the clinic.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.