BioSteel^®

BioSteel^® is Nexia's recombinant dragline spider silk program and is based on using Nexia's transgenic goat technology. Spider silk has long been admired by material scientists for its unique combination of high-performance properties including toughness, strength, lightness and flexibility. Nexia has exclusive worldwide rights to broad patents covering spider silk genes and proteins and is in the process of developing a commercial spinning process for BioSteel^®.

Nexia has decided to refocus fibre development towards biopolymer sales and specialized nano-scale fibre applications for spider silk and away from traditional fibres and yarns. This decision was prompted by the emerging interest in nanofibres and by the ongoing technical challenges of producing bulk, cost competitive spider silk fibres with superior mechanical properties, especially strength. Nexia has suspended it's outsourcing of spinning micron-sized fibres with Acordis SF and stopped its in-house spinning effort. Spinning of BioSteel^® proteins into nanometer diameter fibres has been achieved and Nexia is now determining the product specifications for medical and micro-electronic applications.