Damaged nerves given a helping hand by silk fibres

13 July 2006

Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London are using silk to encourage damaged nerves to regrow. It is hoped that their research will lead to new treatments for damaged peripheral nerves and, further down the line, to treat spinal cord damage.

The research is illustrated by one of the winning images in the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Image Awards 2006.

Professor John Priestley from the Neuroscience Centre at Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry has used bundles of silk fibres to encourage damaged nerve cells to regrow in culture. The silk fibre, known as Spidrex®, is provided by Oxford Biomaterials Ltd. Spidrex® comes from silk worms but has been modified to develop special properties, increasing its strength and biocompatibility, enabling nerve cells to bind more readily to the fibres. The modified silk has properties similar to that of spider silks.

The Queen Mary and Oxford Biomaterials team comprises Professor Priestley, Dr Qin Yang, Dr Von King and Dr Nick Skaer. Using this technique, they have shown for the first time that nerve cells will bind to silk filaments. The Award-winning image shows nerve cells growing along the fibre. Importantly, Schwann cells can also be seen along the fibres - these are the building blocks that support the growth of the nerve cells.

Currently, Oxford Biomaterials Ltd is attempting to weave the silk into tubes of exactly the right dimensions required. These tubes would also include silk filaments inside, effectively acting as a skeleton for a growing peripheral nerve.

Professor Priestley expects that the research will lead to treatment for damaged nerves, such as a knife wound to the wrist, and may eventually lead to treatment for repairing damaged spinal cords; however, he cautions that spinal cord damage is far more complex.

"For us it's an ambitious but realistic goal to repair the peripheral nervous system," says Professor 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. If you damage the spinal cord, however, there are lots of things that will try to prevent the regrowth taking place, such as natural inhibitory components.

"To repair a damaged spinal cord, we will need different types of tubes and will have to combine other approaches such as stem cells, growth factors or other additives. So it's a much longer-term goal, but the rewards are potentially much greater."

Professor Priestley's Award-winning image was taken using a confocal microscope. This allows coloured markers to be used. These fluorescent molecules have been labelled to identify different aspects, such as the nerves (coloured red) and the Schwann cells (coloured blue). The confocal microscope also allows the researchers to see more depth in the image.

"The image on display in the exhibition is static, but in the real image as taken by the confocal microscope, it's as if it's alive," says Professor Priestley. "You can focus up and down through the image, allowing you to answer questions such as: are the axons growing on the silk, underneath or around it?"

From today (Thursday 13 July) the Award-winning images are on display at the Wellcome Library, 210 Euston Rd, London, along with audio clips of the scientists behind the images discussing their work. Entrance to the exhibition is free.

The exhibition can also be viewed online.

Contacts

Craig Brierley
Media Officer
Wellcome Trust
E c.brierley@wellcome.ac.uk
T +44 (0)20 7611 7329

Notes for editors

1. The Wellcome Trust is the most diverse biomedical research charity in the world, spending about £450 million every year both in the UK and internationally to support and promote research that will improve the health of humans and animals. The Trust was established under the will of Sir Henry Wellcome, and is funded from a private endowment, which is managed with long-term stability and growth in mind.

2. Oxford Biomaterials Ltd is a technology spin-out company from Oxford University, pioneering the manufacture of silk-based biomaterials. It has developed an innovative range of resorbable medical devices based on our proprietary Spidrex® technology platform: fibres and scaffolds derived from spider-like silks. Spidrex® devices exhibit excellent mechanical properties and preliminary trials have demonstrated Spidrex® to be entirely bio-compatible and an excellent substrate for colonisation by mammalian cells.

3. Queen Mary is one of the leading colleges in the federal University of London, with over 11 000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and an academic and support staff of around 2600.

Queen Mary is a research university, with over 80 per cent of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001). It has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.

The College has 21 academic departments and institutes organised into three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

It has an annual turnover of £200 million, research income worth £43 million, and generates employment and output worth nearly £400 million to the UK economy each year.

Queen Mary's roots lie in four historic colleges: Queen Mary College, Westfield College, St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and the London Hospital Medical College.