Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Working on New Custom Recombinant Spider
The leading developer of spider silk based fibers, Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, has now announced its new contract with the US army under which it is working to create a set of new custom designed transgenic silkworms.
The Company is working with material performance objectives, defined by the customer, to develop entirely new genetically enhanced silkworm strains.
Over the next month, the Company plans to supply the Army with sample single filament Dragon Silk fibers for independent testing and to have the first batch of finished Dragon Silk thread ready for knitting into Ballistic shootpacks.
The Company anticipates completing the additional silk necessary for producing the woven shootpacks for the US Army in the third quarter. This newly installed equipment is expected to play an important role in meeting this new timeline.
“In many cases, up until now, we’ve been working with research scale equipment as we transitioned out of the laboratory,” said COO Jon Rice. “We had originally hoped to have completed all silk production for the first Army contact by now. That timeline, in consultation with our customer, has been extended due to challenges that a third party vendor had in scheduling and processing as well as the throughput limitations of our production facility in its first month of operations. This new equipment can process more cocoons in one hour than we currently process in a month and it is expected to play an important role in meeting the new timeline. This new commercial-scale machine is expected to sustain our domestic production capacity through 2019 and reduce labor costs significantly.
”These new silk polymers will be evaluated against defined performance requirements and the best performing materials will be scaled up to produce upwards of 100kgs of silk thread.
The Company expects the new strains to complement its record-setting Dragon Silk fibers, but, with an eye on additional targeted applications, the fibers will be designed to generate even higher tensile strength. As a result, these newly enhanced fibers should provide outstanding performance in protective textile applications.
