AMSilk and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer
Research (IAP) have joined forces in the current development of a novel spin
process for making high-performance fibers from AMSilk’s spider silk proteins.
AMSilk delivers sufficient spider silk material for applications development.
AMSilk’s spider silk is inspired by the natural silk from spiders and produced
through biotechnology with an industrial production platform. To date, no
industrial spinning process has delivered a fiber that can be compared to
natural spider silk as found in a spider web. The present collaboration will
match AMSilk’s material and biochemical expertise with Fraunhofer’s expertise
in developing spin processes for biopolymers. The partners expect to deliver a
new process for making artificial spider silk fibers for high tech
applications.
“Having Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft as our partner in this
exciting project is a great advantage for AMSilk,” says Axel Leimer, AMSilk
CEO. “We fit perfectly together, both in expertise and vision.”
“We are very proud to be involved in the development of a
new generation of high-performance protein fibers. In a unique way we will
combine synthetic spider silk from AMSilk and biopolymer spinning technology from
Fraunhofer IAP,” says Professor Hans-Peter Fink, PhD, the director of
Fraunhofer IAP.
The development collaboration will run over at least two
years. AMSilk will own commercial rights of the results with certain benefits
for Fraunhofer IAP.
