Andrew Joseph writes at the Globe’s new national health publication, Stat, about the potential of silk worms to solve people’s joint problems.
“When Dr. Ailis Tweed-Kent was an internal medicine resident at Massachusetts General Hospital,” he writes, “she saw arthritis patients who were sometimes unable to work because of the pain. She could prescribe pain relievers, but she felt frustrated that there wasn’t more she could do. …
“In 2013, she founded Cocoon Biotech Inc. to come up with a way to treat the actual cause of arthritis, the loss of cartilage in joints. For the therapy, she turned to a biomaterial that has been used for thousands of years: silk. …
“What makes silk so special, researchers and entrepreneurs say, is its versatility, something that a synthetic material has not yet replicated. Silk has the added benefit of being naturally biocompatible, meaning it’s safe to use in the body.
” ‘It’s a simple protein, basically, and yet it’s all in the way it’s processed and used,’ said David Kaplan, chair of biomedical engineering at Tufts University, who has studied silk for more than two decades.
“Cocoon is one of a number of biotech companies that have licensed silk technology from Tufts. The microscopic spheres it has developed are meant to be injected into joints where they can lubricate the bones’ surfaces as a stand-in for lost cartilage.”
More here.
Photo: Aram Boghosian / Boston Globe
Silk worm cocoons at professor David Kaplan’s lab at Tufts in Medford.
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