Advantage and issue of silkworm model for development of anti-infective agents.

Abstract

We established silkworm infection model for developing a novel antibiotic. Silkworm model has less ethical issues and is low cost compared to mammalian model, thus allow us to use a lot of individuals for screening assay. In addition, we can evaluate therapeutic activity and toxicity of candidate samples because silkworm has similar pharmacokinetics as mammals. Using this system, we identified a novel antibiotic named "Lysocin E". In this review article, we describe advantages of silkworm model for development of antimicrobial agents.