Spider silk to be developed for nerve repairs

Company formed

Neurotex Ltd has been established with £250,000 from the Kinetique Biomedical Seed Fund to develop novel silk-based products as nerve repair materials and treatments.

The company brings together the expertise of John Priestley, Head of Neuroscience at Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry in London, and the silk-based materials technology of Oxford Biomaterials Ltd, a spin-out from Oxford University. It intends to develop a range of patented devices for the repair of damaged nerves using a modified wild silk developed by Oxford Biomaterials, called Spidrex.

Initial studies have shown Spidrex to be highly supportive of directed nerve growth with low immunotoxicity. Priestley, scientific founder of Neurotex, expects that the research will lead to treatment for damaged nerves and may eventually lead to treatments for repairing damaged spinal cords.

“For us it’s an ambitious but realistic goal to repair the peripheral nervous system,” said Priestley. “If you damage a peripheral nerve, so long as it has a support to follow, the nerve should regrow and hopefully the nerve injury will repair itself.”

Spidrex is available as both a tough, absorbable fibre and a porous, load bearing, tissue scaffold. Both fibre and scaffold are biocompatible and provide excellent substrates for attachment and growth of human cells. As well as nerve repair, Oxford Biomaterials is developing Spidrex for wound management, cardiovascular and orthopaedic applications.