Silk fibroin, derived from Bombyx mori cocoons, is a widely used and studied protein polymer for biomaterial applications. Silk fibroin has remarkable mechanical properties when formed into different materials, demonstrates biocompatibility, has controllable degradation rates from hours to years, and it can be chemically modified to alter surface properties or to immobilize growth factors. A variety of aqueous or organic solvent processing methods can be used to generate silk biomaterials for a range of applications. In this protocol we include methods to extract silk from B. mori cocoons in order to fabricate hydrogels, tubes, sponges, composites, fibers, microspheres and thin films. These materials can be used directly as biomaterials for implants, as scaffolding in tissue engineering and in vitro disease models, and for drug delivery.

Spider silks are among the toughest known materials and thus provide models for renewable, biodegradable, and sustainable biopolymers. However, the entirety of their diversity still remains elusive, and silks that exceed the performance limits of industrial fibers are constantly being found. We obtained transcriptome assemblies from 1098 species of spiders to comprehensively catalog silk gene sequences and measured the mechanical, thermal, structural, and hydration properties of the dragline silks of 446 species. The combination of these silk protein genotype-phenotype data revealed essential contributions of multicomponent structures with major ampullate spidroin 1 to 3 paralogs in high-performance dragline silks and numerous amino acid motifs contributing to each of the measured properties. We hope that our global sampling, comprehensive testing, integrated analysis, and open data will provide a solid starting point for future biomaterial designs.

Stimuli-responsive materials enabling the behavior of the cells that reside within them to be controlled are vital for the development of instructive tissue scaffolds for tissue engineering. Herein, we describe the preparation of conductive silk foam-based bone tissue scaffolds that enable the electrical stimulation of human mesenchymal stem cells (HMSCs) to enhance their differentiation toward osteogenic outcomes.

Cartilage tissue engineering aims to repair damaged cartilage tissue in arthritic joints. As arthritic joints have significantly higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (such as IL-1β and TNFα that cause cartilage destruction, it is critical to engineer stable cartilage in an inflammatory environment. Biomaterial scaffolds constitute an important component of the microenvironment for chondrocytes in engineered cartilage. However, it remains unclear how scaffold material influences the response of chondrocytes seeded in these scaffolds under inflammatory stimuli. Here, we compared the response of articular chondrocytes seeded within three different polymeric scaffolding materials (silk, collagen and polylactic acid (PLA)) to IL-1β and TNFα. These scaffolds have different physical characteristics and yielded significant differences in the expression of genes associated with cartilage matrix production and degradation, cell adhesion and cell death. Silk and collagen scaffolds released pro-inflammatory cytokines faster and had higher uptake water abilities than PLA scaffolds. Correspondingly, chondrocytes cultured in silk and collagen scaffolds maintained higher levels of cartilage matrix than those in PLA, suggesting that these biophysical properties of scaffolds may regulate gene expression and response to inflammatory stimuli in chondrocytes. Based on this study, we concluded that selecting the proper scaffolding material will aid in the engineering of more stable cartilage tissues for cartilage repair; and that silk and collagen are the more optimal scaffolds in supporting the stability of 3D cartilage under inflammatory conditions.

Silks are defined as protein polymers that are spun into fibers by some lepidoptera larvae such as silkworms, spiders, scorpions, mites, and flies. Silk proteins are usually produced within specialized glands in these animals after biosynthesis in epithelial cells that line the glands, followed by secretion into the lumen of the gland prior to spinning into fibers.The most comprehensively characterized silks are from the domesticated silkworm (Bombyx mori) and from some spiders (Nephila clavipes and Araneus diadematus). Silkworm silk has been used commercially as biomedical sutures for decades and in textile production for centuries. Because of their impressive mechanical properties, silk proteins provide an important set of material options in the fields of controlled drug release, and for biomaterials and scaffolds for tissue engineering. Silkworm silk from B. mori consists primarily of two protein components, fibroin, the structural protein of silk fibers, and sericins, the water-soluble glue-like proteins that bind the fibroin fibers together. Silk fibroin consists of heavy and light chain polypeptides linked by a disulfide bond. Fibroin is the protein of interest for biomedical materials and it has to be purified/extracted from the silkworm cocoon by removal of the sericin. Characteristics of silks, including biodegradability, biocompatibility, controllable degradation rates, and versatility to generate different material formats from gels to fibers and sponges, have attracted interest in the field of biomaterials. Cell culture and tissue formation using silk-based biomaterials have been pursued, where appropriate cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation on or in silk biomaterials support the regeneration of tissues. The relative ease with which silk proteins can be processed into a variety of material morphologies, versatile chemical functionalization options, processing in water or solvent, and the related biological features of biocompatibility and enzymatic degradability make these proteins interesting candidates for biomedical applications.