Researchers have developed a cardiac muscle tissue made of spider silk, to investigate whether artificial silk protein could be suitable for engineering cardiac tissue.

Ischaemic diseases such as cardiac infarction leads to irreversible loss of cardiac muscle cells, which is the main cause of reduced cardiac functionality that affects the working of the heart.

For the study published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the team investigated the suitability of the silk protein eADF4(?16) produced in the laboratory for the production of cardiac tissue.

The research involved applying a thin layer of the silk protein to a glass slide. The technique is based on the fact that cells with a negatively charged surface adhere to films made of the eADF4(?16) silk protein due to its positive charge.

No functional differences between the two were observed.

The researchers were able to demonstrate, for instance, that factors responsible for hypertrophy – enlargement of cardiac cells, for instance, in athletes and pregnant women – also led to a growth in volume in the cardiac cells that had been cultured on a film of eADF4(?16).

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