Recent Advances in Developing Insect Natural Products as Potential Modern Day Medicines

Table 3

Examples of potential use of silk biopolymers in medicine.

Form of Silk	Potential Use	References
(1) Nanoparticles	Delivery of drugs to cancer cells	Numata and Kaplan [59] and Nitta and Numata [62]
(2) Co-polymer blocks	Transfection of target cancer cells	Numata et al. [58] and Numata and Kaplan [59]
(3) Small, globular units with tumour homing peptides (THP)	Improved tumour cell-specific transfection	Numata et al. [66]
(4) Nano-scale silk-based ionic complexes with THP	Further improved tumour cell-specific transfection	Numata et al. [67]
(5) B. mori porous materials	For repair of cartilage, bone, ligaments, tendons, vascular tissue, nerves, corneas and as wound dressings	Zhang et al. [68]
(6) Silk-heparin support	Vascular tissue growth application	Seib et al. [69]
(7) Silk hydrogels	Treatment of breast cancer	Seib et al. [70]
(8) Antibiotic-loaded silk hydrogels	Prevention and treatment of infection	Pritchard et al. [71]
(9) Electrically stimulated silk films	Enhancement of neural growth	Hronik-Tupaj et al. [72]
(10) Silk protein matrices	Thermostabilisation of vaccines	Zhang et al. [73]
(11) Vitamin-E loaded silk nanofibrous mats	Skin tissue regeneration	Sheng et al. [74]