ANIMAL MAGIC

How animals are changing medicine

THIS week: Frogs

EACH winter an average of 600 Britons die from complications caused by flu and in epidemic years — such as 2013/14 — the total was as high as 11,000.

Vaccines are usually effective at preventing infection, but a new one has to be produced every year to match the different virus strains.

But there could soon be a new anti-flu drug that protects against all strains. In April, scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, U.S. stumbled across a slimy new chemical — called urumin — in the mucus of a frog found in southern India’s jungle regions. Lab tests showed urumin destroyed all the flu particles it came into contact with — regardless of the strain — while leaving healthy cells intact. It seems that urumin binds to a haemagglutinin, a protein found in almost all flu virus strains, making it potentially the perfect anti- flu weapon, reported the journal Immunity. Researchers hope to develop the mucus protein into a drug — a process which could take five years.