Blowfly maggot’s medicine extracted?

Big, albeit to some people icky, maggot news:

“Lucifensin, the Long-Sought Antimicrobial Factor of Medicinal Maggots of the Blowfly Lucilia sericata,” Lenka Monincova, Zdenek Voburka, Robert Bem, Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, vol. 67, 2010, pp. 455–66. (Thanks to Mitch Dushay for bringing this to our attention.) The image here shows “Left toe neuroischaemic foot ulcer of female diabetic patient at the time of larvae removal”. The authors, in Prague, report:

“A novel homologue of insect defensin designated lucifensin (Lucilia defensin) was purified from the extracts of various tissues [and secretions] of green bottle fly (Lucilia sericata) larvae…. We assume that lucifensin is the key antimicrobial component that protects the maggots when they are exposed to the highly infectious environment of a wound during the medicinal process known as maggot therapy… [and that it is] effective against pathogenic elements of the wound microbial flora.”