Scientists say sheep’s wool could become a new option for repairing damaged bone. According to ScienceDaily, the research centers on keratin, a natural structural protein that can be extracted from wool.
In tests with living animals, the wool-based material supported bone regeneration and produced new tissue that more closely resembled healthy bone than tissue created with the current gold standard material. Researchers at King’s College London said the material helped direct new bone growth across damaged areas.
Dr. Sherif Elsharkawy of King’s Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences called the result a major milestone, saying it is the first time a wool-based material has been successfully tested in a living animal to repair bones. He said the work suggests keratin could become a new class of regenerative biomaterial.
The team also points to a sustainability benefit: wool is a naturally derived material that is often discarded by the farming industry, making it a potential renewable and scalable resource. While collagen has long been used as a scaffold in regenerative medicine, researchers say it can be weaker, break down too quickly, and be harder and more expensive to extract.
To test keratin, the scientists made membranes from wool-derived material, treated them to improve stability, and first studied them with human bone cells in the lab. They then implanted the membranes in rats with skull defects that would not normally heal on their own, and tracked bone growth over several weeks.
