Silk Could Repair Human Nerves Newrotex, a clinical stage biotech start up, has developed revolutionary implantable silk based medical devices designed to address large gap peripheral nerve injuries. Founded by trauma and orthopedic surgeon, Dr Alex Woods of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Newrotex is entering a critical phase of clinical and operational scale up. "It acts like a scaffold for nerves to grow along like a rose on a trellis." Woods explains. When a nerve is cut it sprouts a basic scaffold that it tries to regenerate along, but only last about 10 days. "So if that gap is more than 1 cm with nerves regenerating at about 1 mm a day it can't bridge big gaps and breaks down," Woods said. Newrotex’s proprietary nerve repair devices use natural silk fibers produced by Golden Orb Weaver spiders under controlled GMP conditions in the laboratory. The silk has demonstrated biocompatibility, biodegradability, and strong nerve cell affinity. They can be manufactured in varying lengths and diameters, and with room temperature stability. "Except it lasts for 150 days," Woods said. "So now we can allow the nerves to get across the gap." The silk fibers are implanted into a vein or hollow conduit to repair a nerve and eventually degrade into the body. The device enables repair of nerve gaps up to 10cm, which is not currently achievable by anything on the market today. Dr. Woods hopes his silk-based devices could also help treat the nerve injuries caused by surgeons, following mastectomies or prostate cancer surgery. Each year, approximately 1.5 million patients worldwide undergo peripheral nerve injury surgery. Current standard treatments rely on “autografts”, requiring surgeons to remove healthy nerve from elsewhere in the patient’s body, increasing surgical time, morbidity, and cost. "These are huge problems, which are nerve injuries which, right now, struggle to be treated," said Woods. "So there's a really exciting opportunity to take this simple device and open it up to people in all those different specialties." The device is currently undergoing its first study for use in humans.