| Objective: To investigate the feasibility of using silk fibroin membrane as tissue engineering corneal scaffold.Methods: (1) Silk fibroin membrane was prepared. Contact angle survey and transmittance measure were conducted. (2) Cornea epithelial cell of rabbits was cultured respectively on the membrane and the normal culture plate as a control group. MTT assay was used to detect the 6-hour cell adhesion rates and a statistical comparison was carried out between the two groups. (3) The membrane was implanted into the stroma of rabbits and a control group was set up. Transparency, degradation and biological reaction of the material were observed and recorded. Cornea histological section was stained with hematoxylin and eosin (HE).Results: (1) The contact angle of silk fibroin membrane was 58.2°. The transmittance was 93.0% under 492nm and 94.4% under 570nm. (2) The 6-hour cell adhesion rate was 31.6%, higher than normal culture plate by statistic. (3) The membrane was translucent 4 weeks after implantation, meanwhile neovascularization was observed in limbus. The area of new vessels reached to the peak at 8th week after implantation (36.7±2.38mm2). The material was partly degraded after 12 weeks. Few opaque pieces and vessels (17.8±1.09mm2) remained in the cornea after 16 weeks.Conclusions: Silk fibroin membrane has shown some potential value in the fabrication of tissue engineering cornea.
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