Silk and silk fibroin, the biomaterial from nature, nowadays are being widely utilized in many cutting-edge micro/nanodevices/systems via advanced micro/nanofabrication techniques. Herein, for the first time to our knowledge, we report aqueous multiphoton lithography of diversiform-regenerated-silk-fibroin-centric inks using noncontact and maskless femtosecond laser direct writing (FsLDW). Init...

Silk fibroin, produced by the silkworm Bombyx mori, has been widely studied as a scaffold in tissue engineering. Although it has been shown to be slowly biodegradable, cellular responses to degraded silk fibroin fragments are largely unknown. In this study, silk fibroin was added to MG-63 cell cultures, and changes in gene expression in the MG-63 cells were screened by DNA microarray analysis. ...

Hydrogels are three-dimensional polymer networks widely used in biomedical applications as drug delivery and tissue engineered scaffolds to effectively repair or replace damaged tissue. In this paper we demonstrate a newly synthesized cytocompatible and drug releasing photo-crosslinked hydrogel based on poly(vinyl alcohol) methacrylate and silk fibroin which possesses tailorable structural and ...

Silk fibroin from the silkworm, Bombyx mori, has excellent properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradation, non-toxicity, adsorption properties, etc. As a kind of ideal biomaterial, silk fibroin has been widely used since it was first utilized for sutures a long time ago. The degradation behavior of silk biomaterials is obviously important for medical applications. This article will focus o...

The regeneration of structural biopolymers into micelles or nanoparticles suspended in water has enabled the design of new materials with unique and compelling properties that can serve at the interface between the biotic and the abiotic worlds. In this study, we leveraged silk fibroin quintessential properties (i.e. polymorphism, conformability and hydrophobicity) to design a water-based prote...

Silk from Bombyx mori is a protein-based fiber. Bombyx mori silk fibroin (SF) is one of the most important candidates for biomedical materials based on biocompatibility, biodegradation, processability and excellent mechanical properties. The present study aims at the preparation of silk fibroin for possible applications in tissue engineering. Pure silk fibroin protein was extracted from Bombyx ...

Curcumin, extracted from the rhizome of Curcuma longa, has been widely used in medicine for centuries due to its anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-oxidant and anti-microbial effects. However, its bioavailability during treatments is poor because of its low solubility in water, slow dissolution rate and rapid intestinal metabolism. For these reasons, improving the therapeutic efficiency of cu...

Introduction: In vitro generation of articular cartilage tissues requires a large number of cells maintaining the chondrogenic phenotype during in vitro culture. Our previous studies showed that chondrocytes cultured in/on a silk fibroin sponge could proliferate with maintaining their phenotype [1] and exhibited a maximum value of the adhesive stress, which could not seen when using a glass sub...

Cocoon silks are composed of two silk proteins: sericin and fibroin. Fibroin is a semi crystalline polymer of natural fibrous protein mainly consisting of highly β-sheet crystals and noncrystalline part (micro voids and amorphous structures). Sericin is amorphous acting as an adhesive binder to maintain the fine filaments of fibroin core and the overall structural integrity of cocoon [1]. Silk ...

The dispersion of nanoparticles in ordered polymer nanostructures can provide control over particle location and orientation, and pave the way for tailored nanomaterials that have enhanced mechanical, electrical, or optical properties. Here we used silk fibroin, a natural biopolymer, to embed gold NCs (nanocrystals), so as to obtain well-ordered structures such as nanowires and self-assembled t...