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

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.... :)