A molecule produced by a Thai liver parasite could be the solution to those non-healing wounds

Every day 12 Australian diabetics have a limb amputated because of a non-healing wound. Globally, it's one every 30 seconds. 

A molecule produced by a Thai liver parasite could be the solution to those non-healing wounds - and scientists from the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM) are now able to produce a version of the molecule on a large enough scale to make it available for laboratory tests and eventually clinical trials.

The molecule is granulin, one of a family of protein growth factors involved with cell proliferation. "It's produced by a parasitic liver fluke, Opisthorchis viverrini, which originally came to our attention because it causes a liver cancer that kills 26,000 people each year in Thailand," parasitologist Dr Michael Smout said.

As part of their work on a potential vaccine to protect people from the parasite, Dr Smout and colleagues established that the granulin it produces has a hidden talent - it supercharges healing.

"We realised the molecule, discovered in worm spit, could offer a solution for non-healing wounds, which are a problem for diabetics, smokers and the elderly," he said. With fellow researchers from the AITHM at James Cook University in Cairns, Dr Smout has been investigating ways to produce granulin in sufficient quantities for larger-scale testing.

The researchers worked to establish which parts of the molecule were critical to wound healing, and to find a way to reproduce the active parts of granulin molecules (peptides).