Enzymatically-crosslinked Silk Fibroin Hydrogels as Platforms for Cancer Therapeutic Strategies

In recent years, in vitro tumour models are used to unveil novel therapeutic strategies for anti-cancer formation and development (1). A novel technique, called irreversible electroporation (IRE), recently showed promising applications as cancer therapy treatment (2,3). The aim of this work is to test the conductivity of newly generated enzymatically-crosslinked silk fibroin (SF) hydrogels, which spontaneously acquire SF conformational change from random-coil to β-sheet during time (4,5). The preliminary obtained results show that SF hydrogels’ conductivity progressively decreases during time, phenomenon concomitant with the SF conformational transition. Overall, these findings support the further development and use of these hydrogels as anti-tumor therapy platforms.

Acknowledgments: This work has been funded under the COST action BIONECA (CA16122 - Biomaterials and advanced physical techniques for regenerative cardiology and neurology) and supported by the European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST).

References

1) Hinderer, S. et al. Adv. Drug Deliv. Rev. 97, 260–269 (2016).

2) Garcia, P. A. et al. Technol. Cancer Res. Treat. 10, 73–83 (2011).

3) Neal, R. E. et al. J. Clin. Oncol. 29, e372–e377 (2011).

4) Yan, L. et al. Patent PT 107426. (2014).

5) Yan, L.-P. et al. Sci. Rep. 6, 31037 (2016).