Crocodile blood to Fight AIDS (Part II)

July 24th, 2009 by admin Leave a reply »

fight aidsIf you take a test tube of HIV and add crocodile serum will have a greater effect of human serum. You can kill a much greater number of HIV viral organisms,” Britton said from Darwin’s Crocodylus Park, a tourism park and research center.

Britton said the crocodile immune system worked differently from the human system by directly attacking bacteria immediately an infection occurred in the body.

The crocodile has an immune system which attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and exploding. Itlike putting a gun to the head of the bacteria and pulling the trigger,” he said.

For the past 10 days Britton and Merchant have been carefully collecting blood from wild and captive crocodiles, both species of freshwater and saltwater. After capturing a crocodile and strapping its powerful jaws closed the scientists extract blood from a large vein behind the head.

It’s called a sinus, right behind the head, and it is very easy just to put a needle into the back of the neck and hit this sinus and then you can take a large volume of blood very simply,” said Britton.

Scientists hope to collect enough crocodile blood to isolate the powerful antibodies and eventually develop an antibiotic for human use.

We may be able to have antibiotics that you take orally, potentially also antibiotics that you could run topically on wounds, say diabetic ulcer wounds, burn patients often have skin infected and things like that,” said Merchant .

However, the crocodile immune system may be too powerful for humans and may need to be synthesized for human consumption.

There’s a lot of work to do. It may take years before they can reach a stage where we have something to market,” said Britton.

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