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Crocodile's Immune System Kills HIV
ASEville writes "In an ongoing effort to stop the spread of HIV, scientists in Australia have discovered that crocodiles can fight off HIV and kill the virus. This is a major boon to medicine because the crocodile serum can also fight things that are penicillin resistant such as staphylococcus aureus."
Antibiotics kill living bacteria. There isn't a single antibiotic that can disable a virus (like HIV), which isn't even alive.
The scientists probably hope to use modified crocodile immunoglobulin the same way we use animal-developed immunoglobulin as a tetanus antitoxin for patients who haven't been immunized... kind of a booster shot for patients fighting an HIV infection. The problem with animal-developed antibodies is that the human body recognizes them as foreign, and soon starts to mount an immune response against them as well.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I know the /. commentor's don't read the articles submitted all the way to the end, so here's a bit towards the end that really matters:
Ho, never thought I'd be the subject of a Slashdot news report.
Time to clarify things.
TFA contains a number of errors. First the statement I made about HIV is true, but as others have pointed out it does not mean we've found the cure for AIDS. It simply means that we've compared alligator serum and human serum and found the former significantly more effective at killing the HIV virus than human serum. It was intended to illustrate the overall efficacy of the crocodile / alligator immune system, that was all.
Second, these are not antibodies. Croc immune system works primarily through the innate or complement system, which does not involve antibodies. It's a simpler and more primitive immune response than the adaptive immune system that is key for mammals, but the advantage is that it's very direct and hence difficult for bacteria etc to evolve resistance to. It's "primitive" nature may be behind its effectiveness.
The main finding here is that the alligator / crocodile immune system is far more effective at killing a wider range of bacteria (gram +ve and gram -ve), viruses and fungi than our own immune system. When you've evolved over 235 million years, and your daily social behaviour involves biting limbs off other crocs, you need a good immune system! It clearly has potential medical implications down the line, but that's a long way off yet. First we have to fully understand what makes croc immunity tick. We are still trying to purify a protein which we believe is an antimicrobial peptide, but hopefully that will happen very soon after this recent work.
Eventually if anything does come of this, and we can isolate a "factor" that has human medical implications (and is safe for humans, unlike the far more effective chlorine bleach) it would indeed be synthesised. Adam Britton
This scam fed off our initial pilot study findings, back in 1998. There was worldwide media exposure at the time because of the demonstrated ability of the croc serum against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (S. aureus). They used this media coverage in a weak attempt to add credibility to their product.
Yes, we have tried suing them (mainly for defamation, because they claim we endorse this crap) but it's very difficult to sue companies that apparently don't exist.
Adam Britton
Er, why is research only valid if it comes from an academic institution? Crocodylus Park (the name for the facility run by Wildlife Management International, of which I am an employee) is run by professional biologists who just happen to also run a tourism faclitity to get science across to the public. The fact that we're private doesn't have anything to do with the quality of our research - we still publish in peer-reviewed journals so it's open to international scrutiny like any other research.
We're also collaborating with McNeese State University in Louisiana for this project.
Adam Britton
Correct, this is what we're talking about primarily. The news article was wildly inaccurate and embarrassing to read quite frankly!
We don't talk about defensins because we're not sure yet that defensins are involved. We suspect they are, but until we purify and sequence the proteins we're looking at we can't be sure. Hopefully this is only weeks away.
Well Mr Angostura, you're as bitter as your namesake aren't you?
First of all, if it isn't clear that this news report is crammed full of factual errors, then perhaps it isn't obvious that what I said may have been completely misquoted? After all, the guy almost had me describing a new type of "crocodile antibodies"! This was "quoted" from a phone interview where I could hear the journalist typing in the background, so it's hardly a direct quote. The only part I definitely said word for word was the "gun to the head" line.
And I'm not Australian, by the way (not yet at least) so I have no idea how to operate a sheep dip.
Yes, we did discover an antimicrobial peptide (probably a defensin) several years ago. This is a continuation of that research.
Adam Britton
One final comment on this - I need to vent! Bear in mind that these news reports are *way* off the mark in their reporting. The vast majority simply copied the Reuters article and diluted the facts yet further.
It was Reuters who picked up on the HIV aspect and blew it out of proportion. It was never the goal of the study to combat HIV - it was just an interesting test. They even managed to misquote me almost completely. The main focus has been the antibacterial properties of the blood.
Also, the part about the immune system being "too powerful" is something they pulled out of their cloaca. We're quite aware, as scientists, that it's far too early to start talking about marketable antibacterial drugs. The various factors that provide crocs with their powerful immune systems may not have any safe human medical use whatsoever. The fact that they *could*, however, is obviously interesting, but too many people here are taking this dodgy news report too literally. Don't get me wrong - this is exciting stuff and it could have health benefits down the line, but I don't like seeing this work getting misrepresented like this.
There are peer-reviewed papers out there (check Merchant, principal author) and this work is being written up at the moment (check Merchant and Britton). They'll be far more informative than anything you'll read in the paper.
Incidentally, we can't submit this to Nature because back in 1998 we did a pilot study, the lid of which was blown off from an unexpected source in a fit of excitement! So it's far too late for that - croc's out of the bag, etc...
Adam Britton