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Kowa Company, Ltd. and the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization recently discovered that bagworm silk is even more useful than spider silk, and pursued this discovery to develop cutting-edge technologies for using bagworm silk in industrial

2018.12.05

Kowa Company, Ltd. and the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization recently discovered that bagworm silk is even more useful than spider silk, and pursued this discovery to develop cutting-edge technologies for using bagworm silk in industrial applications.

 

Kowa Company, Ltd. (Kowa), headquartered in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture (president and CEO: Yoshihiro Miwa); and the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), headquartered in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan (president: Kazuo Kyuma) conducted joint research into bagworm silk and discovered that it has a wide range of industrial applications. The results of this ground-breaking research were then taken a step further by developing the technologies necessary for practical application. The major achievements are:

 

  • In a world first, we discovered that silk produced by bagworms is superior to spider silk—which has long been supposed to be the ultimate naturally produced fiber—in terms of elasticity, fracture strength, and toughness.
  • On the basis of this discovery, we developed the basic technologies required for forming a long fiber of bagworm silk (patents applied for).
  • Bagworm silk is not only strong and tough—exhibiting an ideal response as a structural material when external force is applied—but is also immensely stable at high temperatures.
  • We also found out that the strength of a resin is improved significantly by combining bagworm silk with the resin to form a composite material (Fiber-Reinforced Plastics (FRP)).
  • We have established artificial breeding and mass rearing techniques for bagworms.
  • We have developed further the basic technologies required to form a long fiber, thereby establishing an efficient fiber-formation method. (An additional important advantage of our technology is that the bagworms are not killed during fiber formation, enabling the continuation of the next generation.)
  • Our next step is to speedily construct a mass production organization to industrialize the technologies.

 

Spider silk, which has long been regarded as the strongest natural fiber, has been studied all over the world. However, it was thanks to our landmark endeavors that bagworm silk has been found to be superior even to spider silk; thus we can now call bagworm silk the world's strongest natural fiber. Bagworm silk is a silk fiber made from protein, and Kowa and NARO consider this silk fiber to be a sustainable product that will contribute to a non-oil society as a revolutionary bio-material. As it is produced by an insect, the manufacturing process does not cause any environmental load, and thus can contribute to realizing a low-carbon society with a small energy consumption.

Silk is also studied as a material for regenerative medicine. Actually, silkworm fiber is commercially available in the United States as a tissue supporting material (medical device), and various studies on silkworm fiber are underway. It may be possible to apply bagworm silk protein to medical applications as a bio-material by leveraging its properties.

Kowa considers bagworm silk to be a revolutionary new material that will contribute to the creation of a state-of-the-art new industry in terms of bio-economy in addition to its superior mechanical properties, and will construct a manufacturing organization to industrialize the material in coordination with other companies.

END

 

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