Effect of degumming time of silk films on growth of corneal endothelial cells for tissue engineered endothelialized neo-corneas

Silk is a biodegradable natural polymer with low immunological rejection after transplantation. As well, silk can be manufactured in various forms and adjusted to the thickness of several micrometers depending on the manufacturing method. Silk shows high transparency in the form of film, high water and oxygen permeability. However, studies have cited some drawbacks of silk, such as inflammatory response due to presence of silk protein (sericin) and its another disadvantage of silk requires a long period of time to decomposition after transplantation. In this study, silk films with various degumming time (0, 20, 40 and 60 min) were fabricated in order to evaluate the effect of sericin in learns of biocompatibility, inflammatory responses, etc. The experiments such as the contact angle, cell viability and inflammatory factor expression using RT-PCR were performed. Corneal endothelial cells were seeded on silk films and examined to evaluate the degree of adhesion in films, cell's proliferation and specific mRNA expression. This study showed degumming time of silk film fabrication which is a factor for growth of corneal endothelial cells.