Nexia and US Army spin the worlds first man-made spider silk performa...( ion to produce water-insoluble BioSteel...)

ion to produce water-insoluble BioSteel fibers. These fibers were tested for a number of mechanical properties and compared to natural spider silk. The researchers found that the spinning conditions used were adequate to produce fibers with mechanical properties similar to natural dragline spider silk including toughness and modulus, but had lower strength (tenacity) than natural spider silk. Toughness measures the amount of energy that the fibers can absorb before breaking and spider silks are among the toughest materials in the world. In effect, initial fibers of BioSteel were able to absorb similar amounts of energy as natural spider silk by stretching farther. The fibers also had good water stability, orientation and were uniform in diameter.

"We believe the Science paper will be seen as a landmark article in spinning water stable fibers with good mechanical properties using an aqueous process," said Jean Herbert, Leader, Materials Science Team at SBCCOMs Natick Soldier Center. "We and others have been working on spider silk for con-siderable time and are thrilled finally to have the opportunity to spin synthetic silks and move the field towards real applications. The availability of Nexias water-soluble recombinant silk proteins has been a fundamental breakthrough in our ability to spin spider silk fibers."

Scientists at the Natick facility are well-known for their expertise in high-performance fiber application development and their deployment of superior military, and often civilian, systems. The Natick Soldier Center has been working with Nexia under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) since May 1999 and the results are reported jointly in the Science paper.

"These results are remarkable," said Costas N. Karatzas, PhD, Vice-President, Research & Development at Nexia. "First, we were able to produce monomers and spin fibers in an aqueous environment thereby mimicking the spiders way of spinning silk, a
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Contact: Jeffrey Turner, PhD
jturner@nexiabiotech.com
450-424-8910
Nexia Biotechnologies Inc.
17-Jan-2002

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