Breakthrough for the lowly frog

Cience

[TERNATIONALLY known expert amphibians, Dr Mike Tyler, who has :ently caused a flurry of excitement in * scientific world with his medicinal earch into frogs, first became inter ed in the creatures in Papua New linea.

Professor Tyler and his scientific team the University of Adelaide, found that ique compounds found in the skins of gs may become part of an emerging leration of antibiotics hailed as “the n penicillin”.

When refined as a class of drugs, the compounds, taken from the skins of frogs could prove effective against a wide range of infections.

Now, University of Adelaide scientists have entered into an agreement with a US company, Magainin Pharmaceut icals Inc. to develop several peptides found in the skin of secretions of frogs, and for research into other frog species for their medical potential.

Professor Tyler said from his Adelaide

home: “Previously, we had to kill frogs to isolate the peptides. We now have a way to get the skin secretions without any effect on the frogs.”

Called “Magainins” these frog pep tides have been called as revolutionary as penicillin, at a time when many bacteria strains resist existing antibiotics.

Megainins have been shown to kill bacteria, fungi, a yeast that often infects AIDS patientts and protozoans like those that cause malaria.