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--- defillama [2024/12/08 14:53]
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+++ defillama [2025/03/29 14:46] (current)
111.225.148.146 old revision restored (2025/02/23 19:04)
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-====== Defillama ======
+====== defillama ======
-These scientists want to give patients medicines wrapped in silk
+It looks like a tiny kangaroo and it’s bouncing back from the brink of extinction [[https://www-defliama.com/|defillama bridges]]
-[[https://sites.google.com/view/defillama-defi-dashboard/defillama|Defillama]]
+The brush-tailed bettong looks like a miniature kangaroo and, similarly, has a pouch where it keeps its young. But don’t be fooled, this small marsupial is not as adorable as it looks. When threatened by a predator, the bettong will eject its tiny joey from its pouch and bounce off in a different direction to evade capture.
-For centuries, Thailand has produced premium silk fabrics, exported around the globe.
-However, biomedical researchers at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok have found another use for the fiber: to deliver medicines into the body.
+Sacrificing one’s own young might seem brutal, but it’s an essential survival strategy for a species that, until recently, was extinct in South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula.
-Drug delivery systems come in many forms, from capsules and tablets that are swallowed, to skin patches, ointments, and different kinds of injections.
+Brush-tailed bettongs (also known as woylies) once inhabited more than 60% of mainland Australia. However, the European colonization of the country brought with it predatory feral cats and foxes, and the destruction of much of the animal’s native grassland and woodland habitats.
+Between 1999 and 2010, the species’ population size declined by 90% – a drastic drop that some research suggests may have resulted from the spread of blood parasites, alongside other factors. Today, the brush-tailed bettong is limited to just a few islands and isolated mainland pockets in Southwestern Australia: a mere 1% of its former range.
-According to Juthamas Ratanavaraporn, director of Chulalongkorn University’s biomedical engineering research center, silk fibroin — one of the natural proteins that gives silk its incredible strength — can be used to encapsulate a drug in a sac-like form that takes much longer to break down than other natural proteins like gelatin or chitosan, slowly releasing the drug into the body.
+Marna Banggara
+“We are on a mission, if you like, to bring back some of these native species that have gone missing in our landscape since European colonization,” says Derek Sandow, project manager of Marna Banggara, an initiative dedicated to restoring some of the Yorke Peninsula’s historic ecological diversity.
-“Instead of needing large or frequent doses, the protein capsule can release the drug gradually, in the appropriate amounts needed by the body. This controlled release helps reduce the overall dose and the risk of side effects,” says Ratanavaraporn.
+Formerly known as the “Great Southern Ark,” the project, which was launched in 2019 by the Northern and Yorke Landscape Board, was renamed to honor the region’s native Narungga people, who are heavily involved with the initiative.
-Ratanavaraporn, who has been studying silk for more than 17 years, spun out her research into a company in 2021 with two other professors from the research team. Their startup, EngineLife, is commercializing their research — and took its first product, a treatment for insomnia delivered through a patch placed on the skin, approved by the Thai FDA, to market earlier this year.
+“Marna in our language means good, prosperous, healthy, and Banggara means country,” says Garry Goldsmith, a member of the Narungga community who works on the project.

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