posted on 2024-03-13, 22:03authored byJunqi Wu, Kareen A. Fajardo Cortes, Chunmei Li, Yushu Wang, Chengchen Guo, Kaveh Momenzadeh, Diana Yeritsyan, Philip Hanna, Aron Lechtig, Ara Nazarian, Samuel J. Lin, David L. Kaplan
Conventional thinking when designing biodegradable materials
and
devices is to tune the intrinsic properties and morphological features
of the material to regulate their degradation rate, modulating traditional
factors such as molecular weight and crystallinity. Since regenerated
silk protein can be directly thermoplastically molded to generate
robust dense silk plastic-like materials, this approach afforded a
new tool to control silk degradation by enabling the mixing of a silk-degrading
protease into bulk silk material prior to thermoplastic processing.
Here we demonstrate the preparation of these silk-based devices with
embedded silk-degrading protease to modulate the degradation based
on the internal presence of the enzyme to support silk degradation,
as opposed to the traditional surface degradation for silk materials.
The degradability of these silk devices with and without embedded
protease XIV was assessed both in vitro and in vivo. Ultimately, this
new process approach provides direct control of the degradation lifetime
of the devices, empowered through internal digestion via water-activated
proteases entrained and stabilized during the thermoplastic process.