Scientists spin artificial spider webs to treat chronic wounds

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Scientists have created artificial spider web silk that they say can be used to make ultra-strong bandages for treating chronic wounds.

The silken bandages, developed by researchers at Nanjing Tech University in China, are easily spinnable using a 3D printing setup, while also being stable enough to improve the treatment of certain medical conditions.

The team tested the novel wound dressings on mice with a degenerative joint disease and chronic wounds caused by diabetes, which both healed faster than with traditional bandages.

“The new silken bandages are biocompatible and biodegradable,” the researchers noted.

“We believe that artificial spider silk based on an exact spinning strategy will provide a high-efficient way to construct and modulate the next generation of smart materials.”

Spider webs have been used to treat wounds as far back as ancient Rome, however its use in medical applications is not practical on a large scale.

This is because, unlike silk from silkworms, harvesting spider web silk is notoriously difficult due to the territorial nature of arachnids. Using naturally-produced spider silk also increases the risk for bacterial contamination, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Cell Press.

“Spider silk has always been admired and almost has a muthical status,” Professor Trine Bilde from Aarhus University said at the time. “It’s one of these myths that seems to have become ‘established’ by ‘belief’ and not by strong empirical support.”

This has led to the development of artificial spider silk for use in next-generation medical materials, with the latest 3D-printing technique offering a new approach to mass produce the material.

“Consistent with the natural spinning process of spiders, we report a high-efficient spinning strategy that enables the mass preparation of multifunctional artificial spider silk at different scales,” wrote the scientists behind the breakthrough.

The latest research was published in the American Chemical Society journal, in a study titled ‘Overexpressed Artificial Spidroin Based Microneedle Spinneret for 3D Air Spinning of Hybrid Spider Silk’.