Professor Xia Qingyou from Southwest University has made important progress in functional silk research

Southwest University reported on January 9 that silk is an excellent protein fiber and is widely used in the field of textiles and clothing. As a natural high molecular protein, silk protein has a wide application prospect in the field of materials science. Recently, Acta Biomaterialia, the top journal in the field of biomaterials, published the Biology Research Center of the Frontier Interdisciplinary Research Institute of Southwest University and the R&D staff of the Chongqing Silk Fiber New Materials Engineering Technology Center entitled "Genetic Improvement has the function of promoting cell proliferation and anti-inflammatory. Research paper on new silk materials.

The researchers successfully used the silk gland multi-gene bioreactor system to simultaneously express human basic fibroblast growth factor and human metastatic cell growth factor into silk fibroin, and established a new silkworm silkworm material strain that can be stably inherited. To achieve efficient and low-cost production of new growth factors with double growth factors. Subsequently, the researchers systematically confirmed that the new growth factor of double growth factor has multiple functions such as sustained release, promotion of cell proliferation, promotion of collagen synthesis and anti-inflammatory. It is expected to be developed into a composite functional silk biomaterial in the future, and to expand silk in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Applications in the field have an important role to play. Dr. Wang Yuancheng and Associate Professor Wang Feng were the first authors of the paper, and Professor Xia Qingyou was the author of the paper. It is reported that another research paper on the development of functional silk protein hydrogel biomaterials, "Preparation of sericin medical hydrogel with cell proliferation activity using FGF1 genetically engineered silk" was also published in Acta Biomaterialia magazine in August 2018. Published, the research system illustrates the application potential of FGF1 functionalized seric hydrogel as a new biomaterial in the field of tissue and medical engineering, and provides a new strategy for the genetic improvement and design of foreign protein functionalized silk-based biomaterials.