Spiber biomaterial

A novel technology to formulate and bioactivate spider silk

By imitation of Nature's high-performance material - the spider silk - we are able to produce a defined protein that self-assembles into a strong, elastic, biocompatible and biodegradable material.
The whole process is performed under benign conditions, using only water-based buffers. By the use of recombinant DNA technology, we are able to incorporate various bioactive molecules, e.g. cell adhesion motifs, growth factors, enzymes, and affinity domains.
The bioactive silk proteins obtained have the unique ability to efficiently assemble into strong and elastic microfibers in 2D and 3D arrangements.

Various applications:

• Culturing of mammalian cells with optimized adhesion and proliferation (Widhe et al. 2013, Widhe et al. 2016)
• Coating of different materials for immobilized functionalization (Nilebäck et al. 2017b, Gustafsson et al. 2017)
• Promoting wound healing by local display of antimicrobial peptides and enzymes (Nilebäck et al. 2017a, Nilebäck et al. 2017b)
• Expansion of stem cells with maintained pluripotency (Wu et al. 2016)
• Immobilization of enzyme-silk for specific activity (Jansson et al. 2015)
• Efficient presentation of antibodies with preserved fold and improved durability (Thatikonda et al. 2015)
• Functionalization of other bulk biomaterials such as cellulose or silk worm silks (Nilebäck et al. 2017a, Mittal et al. 2017)
• Generation of transplantable cell clusters, e.g. insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells (Shalaly et al. 2016)

Formulation of Spiber silk materials

After expression and purification under native conditions, the spider silk proteins can self-assemble into several formats.