Project description

Severe burn and chronic wounds are currently the cause of 180.000 deaths per year and the debilitation of millions [1]. Despite this, no efficient treatments are available for these patients. The iGEM Leiden 2019 team thrives to tackle this problem by the use of the recently discovered protein ‘suckerin’ found in the sucker ring teeth of the Humboldt squid Dosidicus gigas [2].

Suckerin occurs in various configurations comprising two main modules, and as a result, the sucker ring teeth come in different strengths and flexibilities. Due to its strong, flexible, moldable, soluble, and self-assembling features and its simple amino acids repeats, suckerin has great promise as a novel biomaterial [3]. In addition, these characteristics make suckerin favourable for efficient expression in microorganisms, enabling efficient throughput production, modification and improvement of the biomaterial.

The potential opportunities that suckerin-based biomaterials provide are overwhelming. Although only a few applications of suckerin-based materials have been explored, the distinct characteristics of suckerin make it highly promising for areas such as the medical or biodegradable plastics sectors. Due to its adjustable elasticity, suckerin can be used for tissue engineering, restorative medicine, drug delivery and cosmetics [4,5]. Applying suckerin as a scaffold, could potentially provide a functional attachment platform of antimicrobial peptides and antihistamines, qualifying it as a promising wound dressing material.

Our aim is to explore the opportunities of this material by preliminary producing various structures of suckerin. Efficient microbial hosts are selected for production improvement and biomaterial characteristics will be monitored for their applicability. Based on the innovative character of the biomaterial, a suckerin-based hydrogel construct will be created that is linked to antimicrobial peptides. Since these linkages are going to be designed to release the antimicrobial peptides upon light exposure or in the presence of bacterial infection, the suckerin-hydrogel offers high potentials in the application of healing burn and chronic wounds.