Scientists turn sheep’s wool into a material that helps regrow bone

Key Points:

• Researchers at King's College London have successfully tested keratin extracted from wool as a scaffold material for bone regeneration in animal models, showing it supports new bone growth across damaged areas.
• The keratin-based scaffolds produced bone tissue that was more organized and structurally similar to natural bone compared to the current gold standard collagen scaffolds, which generated more bone but less organized tissue.
• Wool-derived keratin offers sustainability advantages as it is a renewable, naturally derived material often discarded as waste in farming, and it may overcome collagen’s drawbacks such as weakness, rapid degradation, and costly extraction.
• The keratin membranes remained stable during healing and integrated well with surrounding tissue, indicating strong potential for practical medical applications in bone repair.
• This research marks a significant milestone by positioning keratin as a promising new biomaterial that could challenge collagen’s long-standing role in regenerative medicine and dentistry.