Scientists are using spider silk to help develop surgical devices for nerve regeneration.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0It acts like a scaffold for nerves to grow along like a rose on a trellis,\u00a0\u00bb Dr Alex Woods explains, holding threads of silk worthy of Spider-man.<\/p>\n
Standing in a room with around 30 hand-sized golden orb-web spiders, he says it reminds him of his days studying for a PhD in Zoology – in fact, he’s a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon for the NHS in Oxford.<\/p>\n
At the Wood Centre for Innovation, his start-up business Newrotex \u00ab\u00a0want to try and bring this really cool ancient technology to patients\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Golden orb-web spiders are native to southern and east Africa, with the arachnids at Newrotex coming from Madagascar.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0They’re quite territorial so we keep them in their own terrariums and we keep the room very humid to mimic their natural environment,\u00a0\u00bb Prof Woods explained.<\/p>\n
They are considered harmless to humans and are predominantly found sitting in large webs often more than a metre in diameter.<\/p>\n
And it’s the strength and structure of their silk which is of particular interest to scientists here.<\/p>\n
When a nerve is cut it sprouts a basic scaffold that it tries to regenerate along, but which only last about 10 days.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0So if that gap is more than 1cm with nerves regenerating at about 1mm a day it can’t bridge big gaps and breaks down,\u00a0\u00bb Woods said.<\/p>\n
He said the type of silk the golden orb-web spiders produce to dangle – the \u00ab\u00a0drag-line silk\u00a0\u00bb was similar to the body’s \u00ab\u00a0scaffold\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Except it lasts for 150 days,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0So now we can allow the nerves to get across the gap.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
The silk fibres are implanted into a vein or hollow conduit to repair a nerve and eventually degrade into the body.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Helen Hide-Wright, from Fenny Compton, suffered a heart attack at the wheel and crashed into a lorry on the other side of the road – breaking \u00ab\u00a0almost every bone\u00a0\u00bb in her body.<\/p>\n
Her right arm is still weak where she severed the nerves there and had to have them taken from behind her foot, which has left her without sensation.<\/p>\n
Hide-Wright said the surgery she had was \u00ab\u00a0brilliant\u00a0\u00bb but it sounded like the silk device could have given her a better recovery.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0The surgery was brilliant, but what Alex is offering would appear to be far more beneficial, a very exciting opportunity,\u00a0\u00bb she added.<\/p>\n
But Woods said there was still the risk the product could never reach surgeons or patients.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0I’m convinced that if my nerve was lacerated tomorrow I would have our implant put in,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Seeing all the steps you need to get through and the cost and the evidence you need to produce to bring that to patients has been really eye-opening, but there’s still a risk it’ll never see the light of day.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
He also thinks it could save the NHS money as current practices for a nerve graft like Hide-Wright’s involve a secondary operation.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0It’s an extra operation site that has associated harm and that has a cost you won’t need if you have a device you can take and repair the nerve straight away,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
He hopes his silk-based devices could also help treat the nerve injuries caused by surgeons, following mastectomies or prostate cancer surgery.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0These are huge problems, which are nerve injuries which, right now, struggle to be treated,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0So there’s a really exciting opportunity to take this simple device and open it up to people in all those different specialties.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
The device is currently undergoing its first-in-human study in a hospital in Panama to prove it’s safe before further studies in the UK and the US.<\/p>\n
You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X, or Instagram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scientists are using spider silk to help develop surgical devices for nerve regeneration. \u00ab\u00a0It acts like a scaffold for nerves to grow along like a rose on a trellis,\u00a0\u00bb Dr Alex Woods explains, holding threads of silk worthy of Spider-man. Standing in a room with around 30 hand-sized golden orb-web spiders, he says it reminds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}