The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to provide cruelty-free, safe and sustainable solutions to replace animal-sourced exotic leathers by leveraging new advances in biotechnology and additive manufacturing. The proposed project will demonstrate the feasibility of employing natural as well as synthetic components for the fabrication of exotic skins as a precursor raw material for further processing into consumer goods. Specifically, formulations composed of chemical building blocks of native animal skin will be designed, formulated, produced, and subsequently fabricated into composite leather mimics using advanced additive manufacturing platforms. If successful, the proposed efforts will lead to prototypes of engineered composite materials that reproduce the aesthetic, physical, mechanical, and performance properties of exotic leathers. Providing animal-free, sustainable, and environmentally friendly options to conventional exotic leathers can have a significant societal and environmental impact, while opening a new market and supporting growth in the leather processing and tanning industry.This project will replace conventional exotic leathers with alternatives that mimic the native structure and biochemical composition of exotic skins; recapitulate the mechanical and physical properties of the exotic leathers; and able to be manufactured using environmentally friendly, sustainable and xenofree technologies. Two critical technical challenges addressed as part of the proposed research will include engineering the architecture of exotic leathers in a bottoms-up approach by combining the relevant building blocks of exotic skins; and employing advanced manufacturing platforms to develop processes that are xenofree, sustainable and environmentally friendly. The research goal is to replicate the constituent collagen-based building blocks of the dermal matrix. Collagen fibrils of the dermal matrix are formed primarily by the triple-helix-forming polypeptide subdomains that can independently recreate the fibrillar self-assembled geometries seen with full-length collagen protein. The proposed work will use collagen and collagen-mimicking subdomains, along with other matrix molecules, to mimic the molecular and supramolecular self-assembly of fibrils in the dermal matrix to precisely control the diameter, density, and orientations of the constituent structures of leather.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
