Coloured insects lead to drug discovery!

Bright coloured insects can help to discover new drugs for cancer and some other ailments! The find is reported by Ms Julie Helson and Todd Capson of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama City, in the Ecological Society of America’s journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Scientists are already seeking inspiration for the next generation of drugs from traditional medicines used by witch doctors and by shaman, even treatments used by apes for parasites and other ailments. Now they can add insects to their list of prospectors for new medicines.

 When insects like ladybugs, tiger moths and many others don brilliant hues are all full of toxins and taste terrible. The insects have to get those chemicals from somewhere, and the mostly likely candidates are the plants they live and feed upon. The scientists say that these plants, with their weird cocktails of toxins, could be best the best sources of new drugs for humans, if we could only find them.

To see whether brightly-colored insects could be a reliable identifier, the researchers checked what bugs lived on two different kinds plants—first, plants that we already know provide chemicals that are beneficial to humans because they combat breast cancer and parasites associated with malaria, and second, plants not known to have any particular medicinal benefit. While plain-colored insects lived fairly evenly on both, researchers found bright bugs much more commonly on the beneficial plants. These insects get the toxins from the plants by which they keep away the predators.

 These kind of plants on which the coloured insects reside found to contain the substances which can be used against cancer cell lines and tropical parasites responsible for malaria, leishmaniasis and Chagas’ disease. According to the discoverers more studies have to be conducted on the plants and the respective beetles to confirm more about the aspect. Scientists of Panama’s Institute of Advanced Scientific Research and High Technology Services, Panama’s National Authority of the Environment (ANAM) and the University of Panama together trying go more deeper to the discovery.

pictures from:
1.http://www.mongabay.com/images/malaysia/06/malaysia0909.JPG
2.comont.org/Herveybay.htm