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Kraig Biocraft Laboratories (OTCQB: KBLB) says it is moving toward commercial production of recombinant spider silk by deploying one million genetically engineered silkworm eggs across multiple production facilities in Vietnam as part of a Spring scale-up effort. The company projects the effort could eventually produce around 10 metric tons of recombinant spider-silk cocoons per month.
Spider silk has drawn long-running scientific interest for its combination of strength and elasticity. By weight, the fiber can be stronger than steel and tougher than many high-performance synthetic materials, but mass production has been difficult because spiders cannot be farmed easily due to their territorial behavior.
Kraig’s approach modifies domesticated silkworms so they spin fibers that incorporate spider-silk proteins. The insects retain their natural spinning process, allowing the fiber to be produced using traditional sericulture methods rather than industrial reactors.
The company also says it is preparing initial shipments of its biodegradable recombinant Spider Silk material to several unannounced global brands as part of pilot development programs and first commercial deliveries.
Kraig Labs first reported integrating spider-silk genes into silkworms more than a decade ago. The work was later described in a peer-reviewed study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which reported that composite fibers produced by transgenic silkworms were tougher than conventional silkworm silk and approached the toughness of natural dragline spider silk.
In its current production approach, the company produces hybrid composite fibers that combine traditional silkworm silk proteins with spider-silk proteins. Kraig Labs states that laboratory testing of the material has shown tensile strengths for some samples approaching 1.8 gigapascals and elasticity above 38%.
Kraig is also exploring a more ambitious genetic design using sequences from the Darwin’s bark spider, known for producing some of the toughest natural silk fibers. The goal is to replace the silkworm’s native silk genes with spider-silk genes, potentially enabling the insects to produce fibers composed largely of spider-silk proteins. The company did not announce results from this work.
Commercial products derived from genetically engineered animals remain uncommon. One cited example is ATryn, a therapeutic antithrombin protein produced in the milk of genetically modified goats. The drug was approved in Europe in 2006 and by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2009 after more than two decades of development. Sanofi later acquired the developer, Genzyme, for $20.1 billion in 2011.
Kraig’s platform differs from pharmaceutical production because the silkworm directly produces a structural fiber rather than a purified biological compound. If industrial-scale production is maintained, the company says it would represent one of the few examples of a transgenic animal system used for commercial manufacturing outside pharmaceuticals.
Sericulture—the cultivation of silkworms for silk production—dates back more than a thousand years and remains a major industry in Asia. Kraig’s strategy combines that established production system with modern gene-editing techniques to move spider silk from laboratory research toward commercial manufacturing.
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