Implantable Silk Optics

In one of our earlier posts, we introduced you to the work of Fiorenzo Omenetto and a TED Talk he gave about the potential applications of silk in the medical industry and how silk can be used to fabricate better medical implants. Now, Omenetto and his team of researchers at Tufts University have created an silk optical implant.

A microscopic image of a silk optical implant embedded with gold nanoparticles

The optical implants are made of a purified silk protein and arranged in microprism array by pouring the solution of silk protein into molds of multiple micro-sized prism reflectors. After the cast solution dries, a silk sheet is formed that looks very similar to reflective tape. The benefit of fabricating silk sheets in the MPAs is that when the silk films are implanted into the body, reflect back photons that are ordinarily lost with reflection-based imaging technologies, which allows for enhanced imaging even in deep tissue. 

These silk optical implants, which are an improvement to current tissue imaging techniques, can do much more than simple providing imaging for doctors. The devices can be engineered to also administer therapeutic treatments to patients. The researchers are able to embed both gold nanoparticles and the cancer drug doxorubicin into the silk sheets to treat targeted parts of the body were the silk sheets can be implanted. The benefit of this is that it allows for the precise delivery of drugs while also providing a mechanism with which to monitor the body with. When silk sheet is no longer needed, it dissolved into the body, doing no harm because it is biocompatible.

For more information visit Fiorenzo Omenetto's website.