Fiber Reinforcement of Soft Spider Silk Hydrogels
Abstract
Recombinant spider silk-based biomaterials show high application potential due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and low immunogenicity. Self-assembly of monomeric proteins into nanofibrils is necessary toward hydrogel formation and yields a dense physically entangled network, in which cells show high viability but so far low proliferative activity. To facilitate enhanced cell activity and growth, in this study low-concentration spider silk hydrogels were fabricated, resulting in higher cell proliferation but suffering from poor mechanical stability. Thus, electrospun fiber meshes also made from spider silk proteins were integrated into the soft hydrogels using a layer-by-layer approach. The composite structure significantly improved the mechanical properties and shape fidelity, including an increase in Young's modulus by an order of magnitude, while preserving the hydrogels' biocompatibility. This work provides a promising strategy for developing mechanically reinforced, cell-friendly spider silk-based hydrogels suitable for soft tissue engineering applications.
Read the paper
Related studies
- A Survey on Knowledge Graphs: Representation, Acquisition, and Applications
- Toxicity of nanomaterials
- The Human Gene Mutation Database: towards a comprehensive repository of inherited mutation data for medical research, genetic diagnosis and next-generation sequencing studies
- Halogen bonding (X‐bonding): A biological perspective
- Biofilm formation at the air–liquid interface by the Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 wrinkly spreader requires an acetylated form of cellulose
- Opioid Activation of Toll-Like Receptor 4 Contributes to Drug Reinforcement
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.