Bavarian medical ‘breakthrough’ with spider silk

Biomaterial experts at Germany’s Bayreuth and Würzburg universities claimed a breakthrough in cultivating living cells while holding them in place with liquified spider silk.

The research method mixed spider silk with connective fibroblast cells from mice to generate a so-called “bio ink” or gel. Fibroblasts typically begin wound repairs.

When extruded from a 3-D printer, the silk molecules quickly wrapped those cells, giving them a porous matrix in which to flourish, the team said. …

The research method mixed spider silk with connective fibroblast cells from mice to generate a so-called “bio ink” or gel. Fibroblasts typically begin wound repairs. When extruded from a 3-D printer, the silk molecules quickly wrapped those cells, giving them a porous matrix in which to flourish, the team said. …

Afterwards, the cells were liquefied and consumed.

Thanks Olog-hai.

breakthrough in cultivating living cells while holding them in place with liquified spider silk... mixed spider silk with connective fibroblast cells from mice... Fibroblasts typically begin wound repairs. When extruded from a 3-D printer, the silk molecules quickly wrapped those cells, giving them a porous matrix in which to flourish, the team said.

I know a blues guitarist who had a finger tip cut off. His mother wrapped it back on with a spider web and it held in place. It was crooked but it worked.

http://www.chron.com/entertainment/music/article/Earl-Gilliam-sings-lives-the-blues-1725886.php

Earl Gilliam avoided the hospital for 78 years. Two of his brothers died in hospitals within a 24-hour span, and that was all the reason he needed to stay away. When he says “my people live a long time,” Gilliam isn’t kidding; his mother ticked to 102. She instilled in him a distrust of doctors.

He holds up his “trigger finger,” a long, brown, spidery digit that has pounded out blues songs on a keyboard for the better part of seven decades. The tip of the finger is positioned at a permanent right angle, the result of a lawn mower accident when he was a kid. “My mother didn’t believe in doctors,” he says. So she reattached the fingertip, splinted it using spider webs as a wrap and soaked it in vinegar. “That’s just the way it healed,” he says, smiling. “Told you, she didn’t believe in doctors.”...

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