With their eight hairy, fast-moving legs, stocky bodies, and sticky webs, spiders can be really scary. But she has a skill humans have long sought to imitate: spiders weave silk threads with four times the strength of rubber than steel.
Cobwebs are three times more flexible than steel, and they resist heat, fungus and bacteria.
Doctors pin particular hopes on spider silk. It has a good acceptance in the human body that can analyze it. In ancient times, spider webs were used to stop bleeding from wounds.
Today, scientists and businesses around the world are experimenting with extracting or synthesizing silk from spider webs. The German company, Amsilk, has introduced what it described as the first stretchable fiber with mechanical properties similar to natural spider silk.
“For a long time this was considered impossible,” said Matthias Föcker, chief operating officer of Amselec. Focker noted that it is difficult to collect silk threads directly from the spiders themselves, as they are home-grown, cannibals.
Keeping a “flock” of a few spiders in a cage is not an option. He said that “there will be only one spider left at the end of each day”. However, at the Hannover School of Medical Research, silk is actually collected from spiders day by day.
The team gives names such as Rosa and Dasha to their 150 spiders, and the spiders measure five centimeters without the legs and are very peaceful. Doctors hope to use spider silk to help people who have ruptured nerve tissue in accidents or during operations to remove tumors.
This silk can be used to grow tissues that help nerve cells regenerate.
“We have reached the pre-clinical stage,” said Kerstin Reimers, director of the Laboratory of Experimental Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Hannover School of Medical Research, noting that the method worked “excellently” in mice and sheep. “We were able to sew six centimeters of tissue into an ewe without complementary treatment from its own cells,” she added.
A clinical trial study in humans is now planned. Reimers noted that researchers in Belgium and the Netherlands are taking a similar path. Attempts are being made on the other alternative, which is the synthesis of this silk, in Japan, the United States, Sweden and Germany.
