Did you see this? Seems like Vampire Bats are being looked at from a medical standpoint! From Fox news :
"When the vampire bat bites its victim, it secretes this powerful clot-dissolving substance so that the victim's blood will keep flowing, allowing the bat to feed," said Dr. Robert Medcalf of the Monash University Department of Medicine at Box Hill Hospital in Victoria, Australia.
That same substance -- Desmodus rotundus salivary plasminogen activator, or DSPA -- might someday be given to stroke victims to dissolve clots and thereby limit brain damage, he said.
The substance has yet to be tested for effectiveness and safety in humans, but it showed promise in preliminary experiments in mice. The findings were reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Stroke, published by the American Heart Association.
The research involves ischemic strokes, which are the most common kind of stroke and occur when a blood clot or narrowing of blood vessels prevents blood from getting to the brain. The other type of stroke is a hemorrhagic stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel bursts and causes bleeding in the brain.
Some ischemic stroke victims are given a clot-busting substance called tissue plasminogen activator, or TPA. But one major drawback of TPA is that it must be administered within three hours of the stroke's onset, or else the drug itself can cause bleeding and brain damage.
Medcalf's research team injected DSPA and TPA in mice and watched for brain damage. Mice that got DSPA suffered less brain damage.
Medcalf said that DSPA is not only a more potent clot-buster but can also be safely administered up to nine hours after the stroke's onset because it more precisely targets blood clots, which are held together by a string-like substance called fibrin.
"DSPA is almost inactive in the absence of fibrin and therefore much more fibrin-specific than TPA," Medcalf said.
One expert warned that the research was limited to mice that had not suffered strokes.
"This is several factors removed from a necessarily meaningful clinical effect," said Dr. Larry Goldstein, director of Duke University's Center for Cerebrovascular Disease and chairman of the American Stroke Association Advisory Committee. "Does this have potential? Yes. But whether it will prove to be safe or efficacious for humans with strokes, that's a whole different story."
And Dr. Keith A. Siller, an assistant professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine, said that the nine-hour window is not necessarily an advantage. He said that any drug administered after three hours is essentially pointless because the damage to the brain has already been done.
Mark & Philomel
Thanks Lisa, yes, it was on the 'Bat Line' that we both subscribe to. Interesting eh?
What's the betting it won't improve their image in the eyes of the public though.........
Just for fun ~~~
"Desmodus rotundus salivary plasminogen activator, or DSPA," is a protien (as are 99% of all substances that "activate" or act as let's say "switches" in all organisms (there are some RNA~based activators).
If it turns out that DSPA has clinical validity (and knowing this is still some distance down the road), in order to dispense it as a drug it would have to be manufactured in, essentially, industrial amounts. It won't be extracted from bats.
Clinical scale manufacture would be done by causing a bacterial system or a cellular system to "express" the protien via transfection (into bacteria such as e~coli), or transduction (into a mamallian or insect cellular system).
All cells and bacteria are factories for the production of protiens; it's their job.
Doing this involves inserting the sequence of DNA encoded for the expression of the protien into a plasmid (used as a vehicle) via cloning, and then inserting this plasimid into the system being used as the factory for production of the protien (bacterial / cellular / etc).
Ultimately, I imagine the public would have absolutely no idea the stuff was originally discovered in bat spit. A shame, as bats are elegant essential critters.
Adam.
yes and we have have known about the power of sliva for as long as we have been bat workers yet this is only happening now. It's very strange to be so late
The sort of research we are speaking of here, Mark, involves biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology, dealing on the molecular level with the structure, folding, and affinity binding of protiens to DNA. There are over 90,000 functional protiens in the human body alone.
Each protien so far solved (that is, its molecular structure defined), seems to have multiple functions that change when placed in the presence of other protiens. The protiens act like switches, permitting the turning on of genetic traits, such as immune response, eye color, or even the potential of developing specific cancers.
This is subtle research, in a field where less is currently known that we know about quasars. Having defined the human genome is interesting indeed, but the meaning of the data, converting it into knowledge, has barely begun and is likely to take several decades, despite the breakneck pace of research in these allied fields.
Because my wife is deeply involved in fundamental research in this area, I get to hear about it every day, and admit to finding it both mysterious and fascinating.
Adam.