Frog foam studied for use in slow drug delivery to help heal human skin

By | September 14, 2021

A antibacterial substance created by mating amphibians to protect fertilized eggs may help dispense medicine over time

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It’s not the topic of conversation at most pubs of an evening, but over drinks in a Glasgow establishment in 2014, a pair of scientists pondered the antibacterial properties of a foam created after mating by a tropical frog species in order to protect the fertilized eggs from predators, high temperatures, ultraviolet rays and harmful bacteria.

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Microbial biochemist Paul Hoskisson and pharmaceutical engineer Dimitrios Lamprou discussed the foam’s potential as a carrier of medicines that would release into human skin over time to heal cuts and burns.

Currently, doctors use a synthetic lather, which can have side effects. But a natural compound, the scientists from the University of Strathclyde theorized, could be an alternative to such pharmaceutical foams.

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Synthetic lathers lose efficacy quickly and dispense the medicine too soon, requiring frequent change of dressings and reapplication of the foam — introducing the risk of infection and antibiotic resistance.

After team member and molecular biology PhD student Sarah Brozio flew to Trinidad to collect Túngara frog foam, the lab studied the structure, composition, viscosity and stability of the bubbles, finding that they hold on to drug molecules without breaking while the foam is spread across large areas, Smithsonian Magazine reports. It was only after contact with the warmth and low pH of human skin that these vesicles began to slowly release the drug.

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The team also found that the foam released the antibiotic rifamycin over the course of a week — roughly half was delivered in the first 24 hours, and the remainder over the next six days — longer and steadier than existing pharmaceutical foams. However, the testing only used human cells in a dish. Further studies will see the foam tested on skins of mammals such as mice, rats, rabbits and pigs.

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Co-senior author Lamprou, now a professor at Queen’s University Belfast, believes the foam can deliver a variety of drugs, perhaps even such biological molecules as proteins or mRNA.

As RWTH Aachen University biomedical engineer Yang Shi, specializing in chemotherapy and immunotherapy — and not involved in the Scottish study — points out, foams are a more comfortable alternative to pills and needles. He can envision foam delivering treatments to kill skin-cancer cells.

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But much more testing is required.

Brozio devoted much of her PhD thesis to brewing the foam’s individual ingredients from scratch. She injected frog DNA into bacteria, which then generated several of the six key proteins in the foam. Smithsonian.com reported that even when she used just one of these proteins, the resulting material would last longer than a week.

But Yang Shi sees tough challenges ahead, particularly with commercial production. Frogs can’t produce enough foam to meet manufacturing demands, so the key proteins in the lather would need to be purified and replicated in large quantities at a reasonable cost.

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