AntPheromone As Treatment For Alzheimer's

Ant writes "http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/98/2.5.98/an t.html The pheromone trail laid down by an Aphaenogaster rudis ant, to help the ant and its recruited nest mates find their way back to prey they plan to kill, contains a chemical now undergoing clinical trials as a possible Alzheimer's disease treatment, Cornell chemists report in the January 1998 issue of the German journal Naturwissenschaften. Anabaseine, whose chemical analog GTS-21 stimulates the nicotine receptor sites in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and helps reduce memory loss, is one of four components found by Cornell researchers in secretions from the poison glands of A. rudis ants, a common species in the Northeast United States."

Comments

This article is three years old

[Anonymous Coward]

What gives? Couldn't you check up on the progress of this before posting?
Is google too difficult to spell?

Re:This article is three years old

[babbage]

It apparently took that long to get the original published paper translated from German.

I'm guessing they spent so much on research that there was no budget left for translation services from anyone other than Babelfish. That of course meant that it would take a couple of years to sort things out.... :)

Genetic Engineers

[Tim12s]

Isnt it amazing how the diversity of life on earth provides for us solutions to problems. Life forms produce foods and medicine which we couldnt live without.

Take beer as an example.

Lets chop down the amazon while we're a bit thoughtless and destroy possibly millions of solutions to problems we can concieve.

Nicotine Receptors?

[MeltyMan]

I think I'd rather suck down a cigarrette than lick ant hormones. Funny, I think I'll go out for a smoke now...

Who finds out this stuff?

[lightspeedius]

Who's job is it to go around testing ant pheromones and fleas balls for things that might cure diseases?

yet another lead

[spacefem]

"Here we have pyridine-based alkaloids that appear in tobacco leaves, in marine worms as defensive compounds and in ants to help them obtain food." And to help us cure disease, apparantly, it's so versatile. But Alzheimer's is one of those things that seems to have a new lead every month, some reason we think it happens, some obscure ritual that we think will make a difference. It's hard to be optimistic about things like this, I think it's gotten up to the loftiness "cure for cancer" goals.

And is it just me, but when I hear "pheromone" I think of the chemicals that put entire sorority houses on the same menstrual cycle, talk about yoru destructive chemicals, be careful screwing with this stuff!