Silk hydrogel self-assembly

Hydrogels can be formed from silk in aqueous conditions via a wide range of processes, including self-assembly over time, solvent treatments, or inputs of energy such as from vortexing, ultrasonication, electric fields, and related methods. Gelation is usually accelerated when silk fibroin concentration is higher. 

Figure 6.6 Method of preparing self-assembled silk hydrogel. Reprinted with permission from Ref. [10].

SCI in adult rats (Novikov et al. 2002). PHB fibers demonstrated improved neuronal survival in comparison with the implantation of only alginate hydrogel or fibronectin. Novikova et al. demonstrated PHB scaffold seeded with Schwann cells significantly promote spinal cord repair (Novikova et al. 2008). Silk (Uebersax et al. 2007), chitosan (Nomura et al. 2008 Li et al. 2009), self-assembling peptide nanofibers (Guo et al. 2009), and hyaluronic acid (Wang and Spector 2009) are more examples of natural materials that have been examined in spinal cord research. 

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