Silk

Since 5000 years ago, silk has captivated and continues to amaze humans exploring its new exciting applications. Thanks to many cross-disciplinary types of research, it is now clear that silk is no more a simple fibre but an outstanding biopolymer. Before defining the current state of the art surrounding the field of silk-based materials for drug delivery, and looking toward their future, this chapter provides a general overview of silk proteins. Starting from the motivation of the research and the history of silk-based material, the chapter moves on describing different types of silk, with particular emphasis on Bombyx mori and spider ones. Then, a detailed description of the primary and secondary structure of silk proteins (fibroin/spidroin and sericin) is provided. The most common degumming processes and the modern biomedical applications for both fibroin and sericin are also reported.