[sethbannon]

Amazing. Also neat that we may actually learn to treat human infections better after this discovery.

"Erik Frank. Laurent Keller also adds that these findings 'have medical implications because the primary pathogen in ant’s wounds, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is also a leading cause of infection in humans, with several strains being resistant to antibiotics'."

Love imagining leading scientists from big pharma rushing to investigate the compound cocktails ants are using to make the next blockbuster drug.

[danielheath]

And here I thought their anty bodies were enough to fight disease.

[HaZeust]

Nice.

[Xeamek]

What?

[vibrio]

This is a pedantic note, but in general Pharma does not care about antibiotics drug development - It’s an economic desert. If it was a cancer or serious rare disease drug, they’d be grinding up buckets of ants yesterday.

[RmTheGame]

Well rare disease is also an economic desert. Its only because of Government regulation big pharma started to care about these.

Mainly the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 with provided tax incentives as well as subsidized research. There is also the Rare Disease act of 2002 but that IMO is less signifigant.

Don't forget that for rare diseases affecting children the government awards fast track vouchers. These allow you to shorten the approval time of another drug (or sell it for a few hundred million for another company to do the same.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Drug_Act_of_1983 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Diseases_Act_of_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_review