Advanced materials manufacturer AMSilk has entered into an agreement with biotech firm 21st.BIO to accelerate the upscaling of AMSilk’s silk protein production. AMSilk’s biodegradable silk proteins claim the same high-performance properties as real spider silk and can be used in applications including high-quality fashion, smart materials, automotive fabrics and medical devices.
As part of the partnership, 21st.BIO has developed a new protein production strain created from highly specialised, precision fermented microorganisms, which it is hoped will enable AMSilk to meet demand as it increases production from the laboratory to industrial scale.
The new strain claims to ensure the extracellular expression of silk proteins – ie. helping the purification process, enabling manufacturing at higher productivity levels coupled with greater efficiency, thereby reducing production costs.
Gudrun Vogtentanz, chief scientific officer, AMSilk explained: “AMSilk’s protein-based products unlock the secrets of spider silk to create engineerable structures and solutions.
“Through 21st.BIO, we now have access to more efficient production strains, which are a game changer in terms of the efficiency and sustainability of our feedstock. Moving production quantities from kilos to tons brings AMSilk’s technology to the next level. This collaboration with 21st.BIO is key to accelerating time-to-market for AMSilk in the current scale-up phase.”
AMSilk bills itself as the world’s first industrial supplier of artificial spider silk biopolymers and has attracted interest from major brands, including Adidas, in its Biosteel-branded fibres.
Based on a renewable plant based feedstock, AMSilk fibres do not contain any substances of animal origin and come with a CO2 greenhouse gas emission reduction of up to 90% and more than 90% less land and water use compared to other protein fibres, the company says.
Thomas Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer, 21st.BIO added: “We founded 21st.BIO to help companies cross over from interesting innovations at lab scale to reliable industrial biotech production in a timely and risk mitigated way.
“With spider silk proteins this has been challenging, but AMSilk is the first to be able to achieve that goal and bring spider silk proteins into large scale production.”
