Synthetic spider silk based vaccine help with cancer and infectious diseases cure. A team of European multidisciplinary researchers from Switzerland and Germany have synthesized spider silk in the laboratory, which has been used to develop vaccine capsules from peptides that find application against infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and cancer.
The synthetic spider silk capsule protects the vaccine from degradation as the silk is resistant against light and heat. Spider silk capsules are used as drug delivery agents that deliver vaccines to lymph nodes and enhances the immune response.
The vaccine system is stable and is easy to manufacture stated Professor Carole Bourquin of the University of Geneva. Professor Thomas Scheibel of the University of Bayreuth, Germany who collaborated in the work stated that peptide inserted spider silk can be formed into injectable microcapsules. According to Scheibel, special characteristics of spider silk such as biodegradability, biocompatibility, resistance to extreme external conditions lend itself to many medical applications such as sutures, etc. The work has appeared in a recent issue of the journal, Biomaterials.
