SLIME from a colourful frog could kill the flu virus.
According to new research from America's Emory University, hydrophylax bahuvistara, a species of fungoid frog from southern India, produces a mucus able to destroy many strains of human flu and protect mice against infection.
While it's far from becoming an anti-flu drug, the peptide responsible appears to work by binding to a protein that is identical across many influenza strains.
"Different frogs make different peptides, depending on where their habitat is," said flu specialist and study co-author Joshy Jacob.
"It's a natural innate immune mediator that all living organisms maintain. We just happened to find one that the frog makes that just happens to be effective against the H1 influenza type."
Dr Jacob and his team screened 32 frog defense peptides against an influenza strain. Four had flu-busting abilities, though only one was harmless to human cells.
"I was almost knocked off my chair," Dr Jacob said.
"In the beginning, I thought that when you do drug discovery, you have to get through thousands of drug candidates, even a million, before you get one or two hits."
The results were published in April in the Immunity journal.
