Kraig Labs seeks new spider silk patents
United States-based Kraig Biocraft Laboratories (Kraig Labs), which specialises in genetically engineered spider silk-based fibres, recently filed two new global patent applications.
The company stated that the new technologies will allow for larger, more complex and increasingly diverse protein production systems. It said that both patents build upon the knock-in/knock-out gene-editing methods that it first publicised last year.
The first patent will reportedly enable Kraig Labs to create silks that incorporate “multiple sets of mechanical and chemical properties that cannot be created by conventional gene editing means.” The Ann Arbor, Michigan-headquartered enterprise said that it believes its new method can produce silks with a degree of scope and complexity that has never previously been documented in either nature or the laboratory.
Kraig Labs hopes to progress gene editing beyond the traditional heavy chain fibroin component of silk with its second patent, which will apparently pave a way for the co-production of complementary proteins.
Chief operating officer, Jon Rice, commented: “The portfolio of intellectual property that our team is building, together with the resulting silk technologies it has produced, leaves me very optimistic for the future of Kraig Labs, our spider silk technologies and beyond.
“Our research team continues to impress, bringing new and innovative ideas to transcend what others may see as a technological limitation.”
Image: Kraig Biotech Laboratories via Instagram.
