Engineering silk fibroin for biomaterials fabrication

Bone is one of the most commonly transplanted tissues currently, yet the current gold standard for bone grafts is to use autologous material, incurring in problems of morbidity of the donor zone. Thus far, replicating the mechanical properties of bone using synthetic or heterologous material has proven a big challenge in the field. It is in this context that silk fibroin, known for its outstanding mechanical properties, shows potential for the development of scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. The main objective of this project is then, to fabricate porous bone-mimics from silk fibroin; following novel physical or chemical approaches, such as biomineralization, sol-gel chemistry or particle/fibre reinforcing, and characterize these using techniques such as mechanical testing (compressive and tensile analysis of samples with complex geometry), rheology (fluids and gels), spectroscopy (FTIR, UV-Vis, NMR, EDS) and microscopy. This project is of industrial interest, as its intend is to develop viable products to tackle the current shortage of alternative and relevant bone graft material. It is also, backed up by existing intellectual property in the fabrication of cartilage grafts, more specifically grafting material for the repair of menisci damage.