UMDNJ Magazine - fall 2004 VOLUME 1 NUMBER 1

Crocodiles, alligators and Komodo dragons don't often find their way into a story about a laboratory researcher working in the heart of Newark. Dangerous looking creatures with scaly skin and hooded eyes that live in swamps and snap off the limbs of their prey - and sometimes human flesh - are surely foreign to any university, particularly one in an urban New Jersey setting.

So, it's not at all surprising that such media giants as the BBC and National Geographic would bring their lights and cameras to focus on Gill Diamond, homing in on the stark dichotomy between the quintessential, behind-the-scenes researcher in his drab laboratory and the exotic nature of the beasts whose blood is shipped thousands of miles to be analyzed under his microscope.

Of course, the strangeness of it all is just the opener. The research itself attacks one of the world's most unrelenting and deadly medical problems -infection - and asks a crucial question: Is it possible to bolster the human body's immune defenses so it is better equipped to fight off potentially lethal germs? As many of our workhorse antibiotics fail us, finding an answer becomes more urgent.

A microbiologist and associate professor in the Department of Oral Biology at New Jersey Dental School, Diamond's fascination with how the human body fights infection has led him down some unusual paths. He did postdoctoral research at the NIH in the late '80s with Michael Zasloff, PhD, who observed that incisions made in the skin of African clawed frogs healed without inflammation or infection, even when they were returned to bacteria-laden waters. The investigator discovered antimicrobial peptides - short amino acid chains - in the frogs' skin, which not only kill off run-of-the-mill bacteria, but even those that are antibiotic resistant. iamond became interested in antimicrobial peptides, but leaped from studying frogs to cows and winter flounder in his search for molecules with infection-fighting properties. He discovered such a molecule in the airways of cows, which he named TAP (tracheal antimicrobial peptide), and has identified similarly active peptides in the flounder's skin.

dragon So the UMDNJ investigator was a natural to be tapped for a study involving Komodo dragons when, in 1999, expeditionary biologist Terry Fredeking, chief of Antibody Systems, Inc. in Hurst, Texas - which studies and markets biologically interesting molecules from unusual species - set out for the Komodos' habitat in Indonesia. His aim was to collect saliva, blood and tissue from these creatures, which can top 10 feet in length and 200 pounds in weight, and have inch-long, serrated teeth and powerful jaw muscles. Not known for their friendly ways, the dragons kill their prey directly or maim them with bites that inject saliva known to house 52 different strains of bacteria.

Although they also frequently fight with and bite their fellow dragons, the large lizards never fall victim to infection. Fredeking hypothesized that proteins in the dragons' blood provide immunity to infection.

Frozen blood samples were shipped to New Jersey and Diamond and his team identified several molecules in the dragon's blood with antibiotic properties. Diamond says, "It sounds simple, but it's not. First we have to separate the blood into different components, and then test each component for antimicrobial activity." If a component is found to be very active against a simple strain of E. coli, the next step is to determine its amino acid sequence and synthesize the protein in the lab in order to measure the molecule's potency.

Diamond says the goal is to understand how to maximize the molecule's activity against pathogens and minimize its activity against the host. "We need to figure out how to keep the peptides from breaking down once they're introduced into the human body so we can get them where they're needed," he explains.

Of course, any new therapy has to go through years of clinical trials to determine if it works against real infections and if it is better than already existing drugs, he explains. All told, the process adds up to a 10-year investment of time and money.

But that doesn't detract from the joy of telling a good story or the ongoing excitement of the "hunt." When asked about his experience with the BBC, Diamond lights up. "Do you know who Greg Dyke is?" he asks. (For those who don't recognize the name, Dyke was the BBC's director-general.) "He mentioned us in a speech he gave in 2000."

The speech was delivered at London's Science Museum: "Tonight I can reveal that Living Proof, our science documentary strand on BBC ONE, has done something very unusual: They've actually helped find and isolate a protein that kills resistant bacteria and which could form the basis of a new antibiotic." He continues with the story of documentary maker Jill Fullerton Smith, who went to film saltwater crocodiles in Australia and noticed that despite injuring each other, "the wounds rarely got infected." She wanted to know why.

"After many adventures they got their blood samples and last week a leading research institute [UMDNJ] isolated, from these samples, what I'm told is a novel antimicrobial peptide. In tests, this substance kills strains of virulent bacteria that are resistant to all standard antibiotics. And they've even given it a name: Crocodilin."

Well, the beat goes on. Diamond says there's still a long road ahead before they have a marketable product. But someone is on the Internet already selling "the Antidote," a serum purportedly derived from Diamond's work and able to "fight all known human viruses and bacteria...even serious infectious diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and SARS." If you move quickly, you can locate the product at www.biologicalmiracle.com. After shutting down the Web site numerous times (it keeps popping up under a different name), the federal government is on the lookout for imports of this so-called "miracle drug."

The ad on the company's home page says: "The antidote is so valuable that you can only order four vials." But beware, Diamond warns, it's definitely a croc! And he should know.