Could this spider's silk help repair nerves?

"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. At the Wood Centre for Innovation, his start-up business Newrotex "want to try and bring this really cool ancient technology to patients"."

"When a nerve is cut it sprouts a basic scaffold that it tries to regenerate along, but which only last about 10 days. "So if that gap is more than 1cm with nerves regenerating at about 1mm a day it can't bridge big gaps and breaks down," Woods said. He said the type of silk the golden orb-web spiders produce to dangle - the "drag-line silk" was similar to the body's "scaffold". "Except it lasts for 150 days," he said. "So now we can allow the nerves to get across the gap.""

Golden orb-web spider silk is being developed into surgical devices to support peripheral nerve regeneration. The silk functions as a physical scaffold that nerves can grow along, providing far greater longevity than the body's temporary scaffold. The body's scaffold lasts about ten days, while the spiders' drag-line silk can persist around 150 days, enabling nerves regenerating at roughly 1 mm per day to bridge gaps larger than one centimetre. Silk fibres can be implanted within veins or hollow conduits to guide regrowth and then biodegrade. Golden orb-web spiders are housed in humid terrariums and sourced from Madagascar for silk harvesting.

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