Sericin Hydrogel Research Articles

Exploring natural silk protein sericin for regenerative medicine: an injectable, photoluminescent, cell-adhesive 3D hydrogel.

Sericin, a major component of silk, has a long history of being discarded as a waste during silk processing. The value of sericin for tissue engineering is underestimated and its potential application in regenerative medicine has just begun to be explored. Here we report the successful fabrication and characterization of a covalently-crosslinked 3D pure sericin hydrogel for delivery of cells and drugs. This hydrogel is injectable, permitting its implantation through minimally invasive approaches. Notably, this hydrogel is found to exhibit photoluminescence, enabling bioimaging and in vivo tracking. Moreover, this hydrogel system possesses excellent cell-adhesive capability, effectively promoting cell attachment, proliferation and long-term survival of various types of cells. Further, the sericin hydrogel releases bioactive reagents in a sustained manner. Additionally, this hydrogel demonstrates good elasticity, high porosity, and pH-dependent degradation dynamics, which are advantageous for this sericin hydrogel to serve as a delivery vehicle for cells and therapeutic drugs. With all these unique features, it is expected that this sericin hydrogel will have wide utility in the areas of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

The Influence of Silkworm Species on Cellular Interactions with Novel PVA/Silk Sericin Hydrogels

Sericin peptides and PVA are chemically modified with methacrylate groups to produce a covalent PVA/sericin hydrogel. Preservation of the sericin bioactivity following methacrylation is confirmed, and PVA/sericin hydrogels are fabricated for both B. mori and A. mylitta sericin. Cell adhesion studies confirm the preservation of sericin bioactivity post incorporation in PVA gels. PVA/A. mylitta gels are observed to facilitate cell adhesion to a significantly greater degree than PVA/B. mori gels. Overall, the incorporation of sericin does not alter the physical properties of the PVA hydrogels but does result in significantly improved cellular interaction, particularly from A. mylitta gels.

Preparation and characterization of a novel spongy hydrogel from aqueous Bombyx mori sericin

AbstractWe attempted to obtain a novel spongy hydrogel from aqueous Bombyxmori (B. Mori) sericin by using a freeze-thaw method without any cross-linking reagent. The aqueous sericin solution utilized was extracted from silkworm cocoons by using boiling method, and showed continuous molecular weight distribution mainly from 43 kDa to 212 kDa and even higher. To optimize the conditions for hydrogel preparation, the efficiency of hydrogel transformation from sericin solution were investigated by changing sericin concentration, freezing time, freezing temperature and frozen-thawed repetition. The porous characteristics of sericin hydrogel including the porosity, density and maximal water absorbency were performed by changing freezingn conditions. The pore size and morphology of hydrogels prepared at different concentration and freezing temperatures were observed with SEM. FTIR, XRD and DSC curves indicate that the hydrogel prepared at -20 °C and -80 °C adopt mainly random coil conformation.

Preparation of Elastic Silk Sericin Hydrogel

This paper reports a preparation method for silk sericin hydrogel using the Sericin-hope silkworm, whose cocoons consist almost exclusively of sericin. Sericin solution, prepared from Sericin-hope cocoons, contains intact sericin and forms elastic hydrogels with the addition of ethanol. The sericin hydrogel can be prepared without crosslinking by chemicals or irradiation and might be usable as a naturally occurring biomaterial.