Silk micrococoons for protein stabilisation and molecular encapsulation

Ulyana Shimanovich, Francesco S. Ruggeri, Erwin De Genst, Jozef Adamcik, Teresa P. Barros, David Porter, Thomas Müller, Raffaele Mezzenga, Christopher M. Dobson, Fritz Vollrath, Chris Holland, Tuomas P.J. Knowles

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

96 Scopus citations

Abstract

Naturally spun silks generate fibres with unique properties, including strength, elasticity and biocompatibility. Here we describe a microfluidics-based strategy to spin liquid native silk, obtained directly from the silk gland of Bombyx mori silkworms, into micron-scale capsules with controllable geometry and variable levels of intermolecular β-sheet content in their protein shells. We demonstrate that such micrococoons can store internally the otherwise highly unstable liquid native silk for several months and without apparent effect on its functionality. We further demonstrate that these native silk micrococoons enable the effective encapsulation, storage and release of other aggregation-prone proteins, such as functional antibodies. These results show that native silk micrococoons are capable of preserving the full activity of sensitive cargo proteins that can aggregate and lose function under conditions of bulk storage, and thus represent an attractive class of materials for the storage and release of active biomolecules.

Original languageEnglish
Article number15902
JournalNature Communications
Volume8
DOIs
StatePublished - 19 Jul 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2017.

Funding

We thank the Center for Misfolding Diseases and Elan Pharmaceuticals (US, CMD, TPJK), the UK BBSRC and the research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) through the ERC grant PhysProt (agreement n-337969) (TPJK and FV), the Frances and Augustus Newman Foundation (TPJK), the AFOSR (FV) and EPSRC (CH; EP/K005693/1) for financial support.We thank Swiss National Fondation for Science (SNF) for the financial support (grant number P2ELP2-162116 and P300P2-171219).

FundersFunder number
Center for Misfolding Diseases and Elan Pharmaceuticals
FP7/2007
Swiss National Fondation for ScienceP300P2-171219, P2ELP2_162116
Air Force Office of Scientific Research
Seventh Framework Programme337969
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research CouncilEP/K005693/1
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
European Commission
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung171219
Seventh Framework Programme

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