Abstract
Except for honey as food, and silk for clothing and pollination of plants, people give little thought to the benefits of insects in their lives. This overview briefly describes significant recent advances in developing insect natural products as potential new medicinal drugs. This is an exciting and rapidly expanding new field since insects are hugely variable and have utilised an enormous range of natural products to survive environmental perturbations for 100s of millions of years. There is thus a treasure chest of untapped resources waiting to be discovered. Insects products, such as silk and honey, have already been utilised for thousands of years, and extracts of insects have been produced for use in Folk Medicine around the world, but only with the development of modern molecular and biochemical techniques has it become feasible to manipulate and bioengineer insect natural products into modern medicines. Utilising knowledge gleaned from Insect Folk Medicines, this review describes modern research into bioengineering honey and venom from bees, silk, cantharidin, antimicrobial peptides, and maggot secretions and anticoagulants from blood-sucking insects into medicines. Problems and solutions encountered in these endeavours are described and indicate that the future is bright for new insect derived pharmaceuticals treatments and medicines.
Highlights
A number of overviews on insect natural products and their potential for development into drugs to treat human diseases have been published [1,2,3]
Difficulties in species identification, drug toxicity, development costs, and large scale production [3] partially explain the reason for the slow progress in developing insect products as potential modern medicines
The results showed the beneficial effects of the cantharidin by a reduction of the serious side effects usually associated with chemotherapy for gastric cancer [83]
Summary
A number of overviews on insect natural products and their potential for development into drugs to treat human diseases have been published [1,2,3]. Despite the success of insects in terms of numbers and diversity, the most successful drugs derived from natural products, including artemisinin, quinine, aspirin, cocodamol, simvastatin, and cyclosporine, have been isolated from plants, marine organisms, and microbes [3, 4]. 939 nature-derived approved drugs were developed between 1961 and 2010 [4] but none of these were from insects and only a few originated from invertebrates such as leeches, sponges, and cone snails. Difficulties in species identification, drug toxicity, development costs, and large scale production [3] partially explain the reason for the slow progress in developing insect products as potential modern medicines.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
