Oxford , UK ( CNN ) -- If you ever try your hand at farming spiders , you 'll very soon discover it 's no easy task . Penning in a bunch of golden orb weavers -- the queens of the web-spinning world -- will earn you only a few milligrams of ultra-tough spider 's silk . That 's if they do n't eat each other first , explains Dr. Nick Skaer . And they will . Bug catcher . As a boy , Dr Skaer loved hunting for creepy crawlies -- but was never a fan of spiders . Today , Skaer 's day-job involves persuading people to implant the creatures ' silky secretions under their skin -- with the promise that the fiber will weave together damaged tissue . It 's a `` quantum leap , '' admits Dr Skaer , but his creation could one day relieve agony for millions . Watch the video above to see how the Dr Skaer created the FibroFix implant . Thread of life . Skaer , now the CEO of biomaterials producers Orthox explains that silk produced by spiders is not just naturally tough -- 25 times the strength of steel -- it is also `` biocompatible . '' The close similarity between molecules in the spider silk and proteins in the human body means human cells can grow into the fiber . When implanted in the human body , a device made from spiders silk would encourage the surrounding cells to `` repopulate the device with actual human living tissue , '' Skaer says . `` If you 've got a very strong , resilient material which also has a lot of similarities to tissues in the human body , it 's a great place to start for trying to make a medical implant . '' Watch : 'The night I invented 3D printing ' Saved by the silkworm . Instead of fighting the spider 's cannibal instinct , and meager rate of production , Skaer 's team set about creating fake spider 's silk -- made from the same fibers that go into high class scarves . The team took silkworms , which produce 1000 times as much silk as a spider , and broke it down to the basic molecules . Re-spinning this so that all the proteins are closely aligned -- just how a spider does -- creates a far stronger fiber than the silkworm can . Or -- when Skaer presents their finished product -- a rubber-looking crescent-shaped implant . Friends in knees . The FibroFix implant is soon destined for knee joints , where Skaer believes it can help people with damaged cartilage to regrow the shock-absorbing tissue . Without this implant , millions of people have no option but to resort to total knee replacement surgery . As of 2010 , over 600,000 total knee replacements are performed annually in the United States alone , and estimates suggest that this figure will increase 6-fold by 2030 . This marks a $ 13 billion-per-year cost for Americans , which is set to rise as the ageing Baby Boomer generation battle age-related conditions such as osteoarthritis , but demand to stay active . The first round of trialists are set to start receiving FibroFix implants this year , and Skaer hopes they will pave the way for others to avoid knee replacement : . `` If the clinical trials go well , we hope to have this available for patients within the next two to three years . '' Beyond the knee . Skaer sees future applications in other joints -- `` the hip , the shoulder , ankle , all of these suffer osteoarthritis '' -- as well as in the cartilage discs between the bones in the spine . It does n't stop there , either : . `` If you 've got a technology that integrates very well with the body -- which allows cells to grow down into it -- then bones and joints certainly are n't the only tissues in the body that you could look to address . '' In the long term , Skaer imagines silk platforms being used to patch up intestines , hernias , and muscles -- including in the heart . There 's even the suggestion that -- one day -- it could fix a severed spine : . `` Is there the potential for nerve repair ? Well , the chaps [ research scientists ] at Oxford University have certainly started looking at nerve repair as an interesting further application of this technology . And they 've got some promising early results certainly . '' `` That obviously is far , far earlier than the stage that we 're at ... '' Watch : The technology bringing Sinatra , Tupac back to life . Spider thread revisited . For now , relieving the agony of knee pain is motivation enough . And all this has given him a new perspective on the crawling spider : . `` Spiders I suppose are very different from when I was turning over rocks and looking underneath them and when I was a kid . `` I do n't so much see the eight legs crawling around and the sharp pair of fangs -- I see something that can spin me a remarkable material , and that 's very exciting , as a scientist . ''
Is this knee implant really made from spider 's silk ? Dr Nick Skaer has created FibroFix implant that allows cells to `` grow into '' it . It could help thousands of people to avoid knee replacement surgery . Eventually , the material could help repairall varieties of human tissue -- including nerves .