Silk constructs for delivery of musculoskeletal therapeutics

Abstract

Silk fibroin (SF) is a biopolymer with distinguishing features from many other bio- as well as synthetic polymers. From a biomechanical and drug delivery perspective, SF combines remarkable versatility for scaffolding (solid implants, hydrogels, threads, solutions), with advanced mechanical properties and good stabilization and controlled delivery of entrapped protein and small molecule drugs, respectively. It is this combination of mechanical and pharmaceutical features which render SF so exciting for biomedical applications. his pattern along with the versatility of this biopolymer have been translated into progress for musculoskeletal applications. We review the use and potential of silk fibroin for systemic and localized delivery of therapeutics in diseases affecting the musculoskeletal system. We also present future directions for this biopolymer as well as the necessary research and development steps for their achievement.

A review of the application of reinforced hydrogels and silk as biomaterials for intervertebral disc repair

“…for bone repair (Hardy et al, 2015;Li et al, 2006;Park et al, 2010;Sofia et al, 2001;Zhang et al, 2014), for artificial skin (Sheikh et al, 2015), vascular grafts (Catto et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2008), substrate for growing neuronal cells (Sun et al, 2015), IVD repair (Buser et al, 2011;Chang et al, 2010;Chen et al, 2015;Hu et al, 2012;Park et al, 2011;Zeng et al, 2014;Web Ref.1) (Table 2) and cartilage repair Hofmann et al, 2006a;Wang et al, 2005). Additionally, silk can also be used as a drug delivery platform (Mwangi et al, 2015;Qu et al, 2014) for antibiotics (Pritchard et al, 2013) and proteins or small molecule drugs (Meinel and Kaplan, 2012). Furthermore, silk fibroin scaffolds can be functionalised by covalent binding, e.g.…”

Tailored Spider Silk: The Future Solution to Biomaterials

“…Essentially, SS contains special proteins, which consists of huge amounts of hydrophobic-amino acids (for example glycine and/or alanine) and nonpolar amino acids, and there is no tryptophan [7]. As it is illustrated in Figure 1A, SS-protein exhibits a chemical composition very close to amino acid with highly repetitive amino acid sequences that composes about 90% of the entire SS-protein ( Figure 1B).…”

Tissue Engineering

“…The use of specialized proteins such as recombinant silk fibroin offers the opportunities to design scaffolds with enhanced strength or other favorable features, for example controlled release of entrapped materials for drug or bioactive factor delivery [70,71]. The incorporation of plant materials such as wheat gluten and gliadin also may enable the cost-effective production of novel electrospun biomaterials [72,73].…”