title: Salt-leached silk scaffolds with tunable mechanical properties.
abstract: Substrate mechanical properties have remarkable influences on cell behavior and tissue regeneration. Although salt-leached silk scaffolds have been used in tissue engineering, applications in softer tissue regeneration can be encumbered with excessive stiffness. In the present study, silk-bound water interactions were regulated by controlling processing to allow the preparation of salt-leached porous scaffolds with tunable mechanical properties. Increasing silk-bound water interactions resulted in reduced silk II (β-sheet crystal) formation during salt-leaching, which resulted in a modulus decrease in the scaffolds. The microstructures as well as degradation behavior were also changed, implying that this water control and salt-leaching approach can be used to achieve tunable mechanical properties. Considering the utility of silk in various fields of biomedicine, the results point to a new approach to generate silk scaffolds with controllable properties to better mimic soft tissues by combining scaffold preparation methods and silk self-assembly in aqueous solutions.
authors.affiliation: National Engineering Laboratory for Modern Silk, College of Textile and Clothing Engineering, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Danyu
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Sen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: David L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Kaplan
authors.forename: Bingbo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Hesun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials / Q000737:chemistry*; D012831:Bombyx; D047011:Silk / Q000737:chemistry*; D012965:Sodium Chloride; D023822:Tissue Engineering; D054457:Tissue Scaffolds
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D047011:Silk; D012965:Sodium Chloride