Effect of processing on silk-based biomaterials: Reproducibility and biocompatibility

Lindsay S. Wray, Xiao Hu, Jabier Gallego, Irene Georgakoudi, Fiorenzo G. Omenetto, Daniel Schmidt, David L. Kaplan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

302 Scopus citations

Abstract

Silk fibroin has been successfully used as a biomaterial for tissue regeneration. To prepare silk fibroin biomaterials for human implantation a series of processing steps are required to purify the protein. Degumming to remove inflammatory sericin is a crucial step related to biocompatibility and variability in the material. Detailed characterization of silk fibroin degumming is reported. The degumming conditions significantly affected cell viability on the silk fibroin material and the ability to form three-dimensional porous scaffolds from the silk fibroin, but did not affect macrophage activation or β-sheet content in the materials formed. Methods are also provided to determine the content of residual sericin in silk fibroin solutions and to assess changes in silk fibroin molecular weight. Amino acid composition analysis was used to detect sericin residuals in silk solutions with a detection limit between 1.0 and 10% wt/wt, while fluorescence spectroscopy was used to reproducibly distinguish between silk samples with different molecular weights. Both methods are simple and require minimal sample volume, providing useful quality control tools for silk fibroin preparation processes.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)89-101
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Biomedical Materials Research - Part B Applied Biomaterials
Volume99 B
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2011
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Biomaterials
  • Biomedical Engineering

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