Pharmaceutical Opto-Electro Sensing Suture Made of Regenerated Silk Protein

During various medical treatments, surgical sutures play an important role due to their outstanding contribution to promoting wound healing. Recently, increasing interest has been paid to bioactive and electronic sutures made of synthetic polymers, owing to their ability to reduce inflammation as well as medically and/or electronically facilitate wound healing. In this work, we designed and fabricated an antibacterial opto-electro sensing suture (OESS) based on regenerated silk fibroin. This sensing suture is hierarchically structured and heterogeneously functionalized so to synergistically integrate multiple clinical favorable functions into one suture device such as reducing bacterial infection in wound sites, tension measurements of tissues and real-time monitoring capabilities optically and electronically. Our approach provides greater insight into multifunctional sutures with inherent sensing capabilities and offers enormous potential in both therapeutic and diagnostic applications.