US spider silk-based fibre producer Kraig Biocraft Laboratories has announced that it’s taken delivery of its first shipment of spider silk from its Vietnamese subsidiary, Prodigy Textiles. Kraig launched the Prodigy brand in 2018, citing the “optimal layout” and “existing infrastructure” that a facility in Vietnam could offer to further develop its genetically modified silkworm fibres.
A 50,000 square-foot site was retrofitted to accommodate silkworms in greater volumes than had been feasible in Michigan, where the company is headquarters. Since, the decision has paid off with Kraig able to produce its proprietary fibre at scales hitherto unattainable.
In October of 2019, the company braced for what it said would be a record-breaking month for production. It said the volumes it went on to produce surpassed the collective quantities of over ten years of operating in the United States.
With this infrastructure going from strength to strength, Kraig has now taken delivery of its first shipment of the fibre from Prodigy, which it’s effectively integrated in the production of personal protective equipment previously.
Jon Rice, Kraig’s Chief Operating Officer, said: “I want to thank the Prodigy Textiles team for making this milestone possible and setting the stage for our expansion. This is helping us in our transition from being the leading developer of spider silk technologies to a producer and supplier of high-quality spider silk fibres.”
Kraig has filed a patent application to protect its advanced “knock-in knock-out gene” editing technologies for the creation of nearly pure spider silk. The series of processes involved were first disclosed in a provisional patent filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) under applications #62/995,717 in February, 2020. The full patent application now filed takes advantage of that earlier priority date in the first-to file-patent system.
