Browsing by Author "Holland, Chris"

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    The Biomedical Use of Silk: Past, Present, Future
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2019) Holland, Chris; Numata, Keiji; Rnjak-Kovacina, Jelena; Seib, F. Philipp
    Humans have long appreciated silk for its lustrous appeal and remarkable physical properties, yet as the mysteries of silk are unraveled, it becomes clear that this outstanding biopolymer is more than a high-tech fiber. This progress report provides a critical but detailed insight into the biomedical use of silk. This journey begins with a historical perspective of silk and its uses, including the long-standing desire to reverse engineer silk. Selected silk structure–function relationships are then examined to appreciate past and current silk challenges. From this, biocompatibility and biodegradation are reviewed with a specific focus of silk performance in humans. The current clinical uses of silk (e.g., sutures, surgical meshes, and fabrics) are discussed, as well as clinical trials (e.g., wound healing, tissue engineering) and emerging biomedical applications of silk across selected formats, such as silk solution, films, scaffolds, electrospun materials, hydrogels, and particles. The journey finishes with a look at the roadmap of next-generation recombinant silks, especially the development pipeline of this new industry for clinical use. © 2018 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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    Mapping Nanostructural Variations in Silk by Secondary Electron Hyperspectral Imaging
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2017) Wan, Quan; Abrams, Kerry J.; Masters, Robert C.; Talari, Abdullah C. S.; Rehman, Ihtesham U.; Claeyssens, Frederik; Holland, Chris; Rodenburg, Cornelia
    Nanostructures underpin the excellent properties of silk. Although the bulk nanocomposition of silks is well studied, direct evidence of the spatial variation of nanocrystalline (ordered) and amorphous (disordered) structures remains elusive. Here, secondary electron hyperspectral imaging can be exploited for direct imaging of hierarchical structures in carbon-based materials, which cannot be revealed by any other standard characterization methods. Through applying this technique to silks from domesticated (Bombyx mori) and wild (Antheraea mylitta) silkworms, a variety of previously unseen features are reported, highlighting the local interplay between ordered and disordered structures. This technique is able to differentiate composition on the nanoscale and enables in-depth studies into the relationship between morphology and performance of these complex biopolymer systems.