A material that begins as sheep’s wool has now shown an ability to help damaged bone rebuild itself inside a living animal. The surprising part is not simply that wool can be turned into a medical material. It is that keratin extracted from the fibre produced new bone with a more organized architecture than tissue formed using a conventional collagen membrane.
The finding points to an unusual possibility: an agricultural byproduct could become a useful ingredient in regenerative medicine. The research was carried out by scientists at King’s College London and published in Biomaterials Advances in 2026. The team developed membranes from keratin extracted from wool and chemically stabilized them so they could remain intact during healing.
