Yes, silk can be used to artificially grow corneal endothelial cells and transplant them into corneal transplant patients
Release date – Saturday 23 July 06:40
Hyderabad: Natural silk is widely used to design luxurious sarees and other garments. But now, a team of researchers from Hyderabad is using this biocompatible fabric to grow corneal tissue for human corneal transplants.
Yes, silk can be used to artificially grow corneal endothelial cells and then transplanted into corneal transplant patients.
The findings, led by a team of researchers from the LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), Hyderabad, recently published in ACS Biomaterials Science Engineering (American Chemical Society), state that “silk membranes are suitable for safely engineering eye “. Corneal endothelium in the laboratory”.
The study used silk proteins from two non-mulberry silkworms, Castor worm (PR), which is used to produce non-mulberry silk; and Antheraea assamensis, which produces Assam’s famous Tussar silk.
The cornea is the transparent tissue that reflects light into the eye and consists of different layers. The thickest layer of the cornea is the stroma and a layer of cells that hydrate it, called the endothelium. In corneal transplantation, the damaged endothelium is replaced. However, due to a chronic shortage of corneal tissue, researchers are modifying the endothelial layer of the cornea in the lab, the researchers said.
To engineer the endothelial layer, the LVPEI researchers used a silk membrane as a matrix, or scaffold, on which layers of corneal cells can grow. The research team, which included Drs Swatilekha Hazra and Charanya Ramachandran from LVPEI and Drs Souradeep Ray and Biman Mandal from IIT Guwahati, investigated the long-term viability of the silk film as a scaffold for culturing corneal endothelial cells and showed that it is safe to do so.
“While this is an often overlooked aspect of tissue engineering, it is important to ensure that the materials used to culture cells do not negatively affect their growth, phenotype or function. This study gives us further confidence that silk membranes really suitable for corneal endothelial engineering for transplantation,” Dr. Ramachandran, a scientist at LVPEI’s Professor Brien Holden Eye Research Center, said in the study.
