Preparation of Porous Scaffolds from Silk Fibroin Extracted from the Silk Gland of Bombyx mori (B. mori)

Mingying Yang,Liangjun Zhu,Yajun Shuai,Wen He,Sijia Min

doi:10.3390/ijms13067762

Mingying Yang, Liangjun Zhu + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms13067762

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Abstract

In order to use a simple and ecofriendly method to prepare porous silk scaffolds, aqueous silk fibroin solution (ASF) was extracted from silk gland of 7-day-old fifth instar larvae of Bombyx mori (B. mori). SDS-page analysis indicated that the obtained fibroin had a molecular weight higher than 200 kDa. The fabrication of porous scaffolds from ASF was achieved by using the freeze-drying method. The pore of porous scaffolds is homogenous and tends to become smaller with an increase in the concentration of ASF. Conversely, the porosity is decreased. The porous scaffolds show impressive compressive strength which can be as high as 6.9 ± 0.4 MPa. Furthermore, ASF has high cell adhesion and growth activity. It also exhibits high ALP activity. This implies that porous scaffolds prepared from ASF have biocompatibility. Therefore, the porous scaffolds prepared in this study have potential application in tissue engineering due to the impressive compressive strength and biocompatibility.

Highlights

The silk spun from domestic silkworm Bombyx mori (B. mori) has been used commercially for biomedical sutures for several decades, and in textile production for at least 2500 years
Three-dimensional (3D) porous scaffolds based on B. mori silk fibroin have been increasingly proposed for the field of tissue engineering because, the porous scaffolds have enough mechanical stability to support cell adhesion and expansion, and degrade at a rate comparable with new tissue growth, and porosity of the scaffold is critical to provide sufficient opportunity for cell migration and expansion [16,17,18,19,20]
This is consistent with the SDS-page analysis, further implying that the aqueous silk fibroin solution (ASF) extracted from the silk gland remains intact

Summary

Introduction

The silk spun from domestic silkworm Bombyx mori (B. mori) has been used commercially for biomedical sutures for several decades, and in textile production for at least 2500 years. The silk fibroin has been used as an important set of material options in the fields of controlled release, biomaterials, and scaffolds for tissue engineering [13,14,15]. Three-dimensional (3D) porous scaffolds based on B. mori silk fibroin have been increasingly proposed for the field of tissue engineering because, the porous scaffolds have enough mechanical stability to support cell adhesion and expansion, and degrade at a rate comparable with new tissue growth, and porosity of the scaffold is critical to provide sufficient opportunity for cell migration and expansion [16,17,18,19,20]. The features of 3D porous silk scaffolds are related to cartilage tissue engineering from hMSCs [22]

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