Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, the leading developer of spider silk-based fibres, has just announced at a press conference, that it successfully developed a new technology platform, based on a non-CRISPR gene editing knock-in knock-out technology. Other than the silkworm’s remaining specifically desired native silk protein elements, the company is now able to produce nearly pure spider silk.

The new technology has a purity rate that is about ten times greater than Dragon Silk, a fibre that the company developed with its previous tools. Dragon Silk has already been demonstrated to be tougher than many fibres used in bullet proof vests and the company expects that the increased spider silk purity, created using this new approach, will yield materials beyond those capabilities.

According to the company, the new system utilizes the company’s eco-friendly and cost-effective silkworm production system, which is significantly more advanced than any of the competing methods.

Anouncement highlights include:

•          Generation II Spider Silk Technology- Essentially pure spider silk.

•          Generation III Spider Silk Technology- More specific customization.

•          The Company’s knock-in knock-out technology allows Kraig Labs to work with very complex protein sequences in silkworm, which are about four times more complex than published technologies.

Dr. Trevor Kane, the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer, stated that his team is already working on producing even larger, more complex, constructs, based on the Darwin’s bark spider.  

An ambitious immunity boosting program will benefit not only the company’s proprietary transgenics, but will help strengthen production for mundane silk market, which is a $5 billion a year industry. The new technology, which is the result of over ten years of effort, hits the target of one of the company’s primary technological goals and opens the door for large scale US production.

“This new technology has applications and implications far beyond material performance,” Kraig said.

“The company is now well underway, and rapidly advancing, its efforts to enhance its silkworm technology to allow for large scale US production.” Kraig has already begun the validation process for the first of these new transgenics and anticipates US production to be possible as early as 2022 or 2023.

Dragon Silk fibres.© Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc.

“This ground-breaking announcement does not affect the company’s current work, at its overseas production facility, to ramp up Dragon Silk and Monster Silk, as these fibres are designed to address their own markets,” Kraig said in a statement.

Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc., a reporting biotechnology company is the leading developer of genetically engineered spider silk-based fibre technologies. It has achieved a series of scientific breakthroughs in the area of spider silk technology with implications for the global textiles industry.

www.KraigLabs.com