Medicines Derived from Insects: A Review

Insect derived products like honey, venom, silk and insect like maggots have been widely used in folklore medicine for thousands of years. Drug activities detected include powerful antimicrobials against antibiotic-resistant bacteria and HIV, as well as anti-cancer, anti-angiogenesis and anti-coagulant factors and wound healing agents. Previously, a number of overviews on insect natural products and their potential for development into drugs to treat human diseases have been published. Recently, however, there have been additional advances in this field. The present review therefore focuses on these as well as their implication for present day drug development.