All Hail, Penicillins!
Medicine changed completely when Alexander Fleming found out that penicillins had miracle qualities to treat infections. The discovery was a happy accident, as many medical breakthroughs are, and it changed the world in that odd moment in 1928.
That’s not even an exaggeration. By 1940, penicillins were being mass produced and used to cure nearly everything. But that has begun to be problematic in the medical world.
It’s not a mystery that, because of overuse, the effects of many antibiotics are wavering. Viruses and bacteria have grown resistant to the drugs we produce. Also, antibiotics need to be extracted from nature, making them hard to find and produce. The daunting rise of superbugs has only highlighted our desperate need for new avenues of antibiotics, and many ideas are being explored in the hunt to find new, more effective medicines.
Turns Out A Good Place to Look Is In Crocodilians!
Alligators and crocodiles have natural immunology that renders them capable of living in almost any habitat. They have a naturally impressive amount of enzymes that can fight off bacterias and viruses. And it makes sense: crocodilians have outlived many of the planet’s species.
So far, 45 peptides have been isolated in alligator blood.With a little help from modern science, the enzymes in the blood could be tweaked to fight off even the HIV Virus.
This Isn’t New News
In 2007 Dr. Mark Merchant set out with a grant to find comparable enzymes and proteins in Caimans, and by 2011 his team had success with alligator blood cells. Now, it seems the efforts have gained more headway, and a few headlines.
Unfortunately, antibiotic research is funded to a large extent by pharmaceutical companies which are already making good profits from the antibiotics we know and trust. Funding the long and tedious process of isolating and testing microbial communities is a financial gamble for them. Even though these newfound enzymes have been isolated in alligator blood, there is nothing set in stone, and that doesn’t seem like much incentive.
Without the proper funding this breakthrough may die young. When penicillin was first pushed into mass production, the demand outnumbered the supply! It was during World War II, and the introduction of the drug led to a staggering decrease of deaths by infections, which accelerated the process of its implementation.
Today, the incentive to fund new antibiotics is driven by hypothesis: What will happen when we can no longer treat resistant-infections?
The Future Looks Bright!
The discovery of unique peptides in alligator blood is something to be celebrated! With the right push, the antibiotic research will continue with a similar fervor to that of penicillin, and the study has already begun exploring peptides in different crocodilians. After these impressive advances in the study, it seems that alligator blood holds a special link to the future of medicine.
