Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[Eskaminagaga]

Spider silk on cusp of storming textiles market
By Kamelia Kountcheva
19 June 2015

http://www.wtin.com/article/?articleID=4295000587&channelId=1120

Spider silk is definitely the new fibre to watch out for. It has been known for a while that spiders produce some of the most fascinating functional fibre: stronger than steel per unit wight, very lightweight, elastic (reportedly stretching up to 20 times its size), soft, water resistant – you name it.

However, news is suddenly erupting about companies on the brink of developing a means of commercialising this fibre or a close synthetic match, and beginning to explore its vast potential in textiles and apparel.

So far, spider silk has been unattainable on a large enough scale, due to the biology of the animals themselves. They produce the substance, but they are very difficult to rear and breed in a lab setting, as males usually die during the breeding process.

However, companies like AMSilk, Bolt Threads and Kraig Biocraft Laboratories have all recognised the enormous potential this fibre will have if it becomes commercially viable and are working tirelessly towards finding a method for its large-scale production.

The properties of spider and spider inspired silk could be put to good use in technical textiles, apparel, the fashion industry and potentially more. Spider silk producers believe that textiles produced with this fibre will offer better durability, lightness and flexibility than any synthetics currently on the market.

While Kraig is aiming to use genetically modified silkworms to produce spider silk as a natural fibre based on the same production process that has been proven effective for silk, Bolt Threads is working on a way to replicate the proteins that comprise spider silk and engineer a synthetic version which the company believes could be adapted to offer a number of different properties.

AMSilk is another company which has been developing a programme to manufacture a man-made fibre containing 100% spider silk, which it says would be of huge benefit to the technical textiles and medical textiles fields.

Other means of obtaining the protein which makes spider silk the incredible substance it is, include genetically modifying goats to produce it in their milk, which can then be extracted and spun into fibres. This was carried out in the US by Nexia Biotechnologies, and later by the Randy Lewis lab of the University of Wyoming and Utah State University. While they were successful in producing the substance without the use of spiders themselves, inability to produce in mass quantities has stunted the progression of the fibre onto the market. As well as transgenic goats, transgenic E. coli have also been developed to produce spider silk proteins.

This material is on the cusp of exploding into the textiles industry and it seems to have the potential to take the technical textiles market by storm. Recent news of Kraig Labs signing a memorandum of understanding with Vietnam, which outlines a framework for the creation and rearing of transgenic silkworms, means we are another step closer to mass-attaining this valuable substance.