Exploring North East India’s Non-Mulberry Silk based Bioinks for Three Dimensional Bioprinting

Three-dimensional bioprinting has catapulted research in the domain of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine to newer heights in recent years. In this milieu, silk-based bioink has garnered tremendous research thrust. Mulberry silkworm silk fibroin has found profound impetus for formulating biocompatible and mechanically robust bioink with high-cell loading potency, used in the fabrication of 3D bio-constructs for prospective clinical applications. Pertinently, North East India's non-mulberry silk varieties ‘muga’ and ‘eri’, endowed with specific cell-binding RGD sequence, exhibit special biomaterial-attributes including better mechanical resilience than their mulberry counterparts. The recent exploitation of the former for the formulation of novel bioinks to fabricate 3D constructs for prospective meniscus, cartilage and osteochondral tissue repair merits special mention. Their self-gelling attribute permits the evasion of the use of conventional toxic chemical cross-linkers. With prospective application in the niche of regenerative medicine, these non-mulberry silk varieties seem to have seeded new anticipations vis-à-vis increasing cases of degenerative diseases and associated morbidity.