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- | It looks like a tiny kangaroo and it’s bouncing back from the brink of extinction | + | These scientists want to give patients medicines wrapped in silk |
- | 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. | + | [[https://sites.google.com/view/defillama-defi-dashboard/ |
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+ | For centuries, Thailand | ||
- | Sacrificing one’s own young might seem brutal, but it’s an essential survival strategy | + | However, biomedical researchers at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok have found another use for the fiber: to deliver medicines into the body. |
- | 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. | + | Drug delivery systems come in many forms, from capsules |
- | 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 | + | |
- | Marna Banggara | + | According to Juthamas Ratanavaraporn, director of Chulalongkorn University’s biomedical engineering research center, silk fibroin — one of the natural proteins |
- | “We are on a mission, if you like, to bring back some of these native species | + | |
- | Formerly known as the “Great Southern Ark,” the project, which was launched | + | “Instead of needing large or frequent doses, the protein capsule can release the drug gradually, in the appropriate amounts needed |
- | “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. | + | 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 |