MOSQUITOES, ticks and other blood-sucking insects could be used to treat human ailments from asthma to heart disease, a new Oxford company hopes.

Evolutec, based on Oxford Science Park, aims to extract compounds from the insects' saliva to develop medicines for a range of illnesses, writes Maggie Hartford.

The company's director Wynne Weston-Davies said there were about 300 different kinds of blood-sucking arthropods, each with several hundred active molecules.

"We are just scratching the surface at the moment," he said.

"As well as ticks and mosquitoes there are lice and horseflies - anything that sucks blood."

The first product could be a spray to treat hay fever, asthma or allergic conjunctivitis - based on an insect bite's power to overcome the immune response in humans.

The company also hopes to use the insects' amazing ability to stick to the skin. It hopes to develop a "tissue cement", aimed at helping to heal wounds or use for skin grafts.

Dr Weston-Davies said: "Ticks start to produce it as soon as they land on the skin. It takes an hour before they are firmly stuck on. "We think the cement mimics kerotin molecules and tricks the body into thinking that it's just another bit of skin.

"It could be used instead of stitches to stick wounds together." Drug discovery is based at two sites - the Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology in the Oxford University science area, and also in Bratislava. There Oxford-trained Slovakian scientists are aiming to find a heart disease treatment, based on the blood-suckers' power to help the heart to pump.

The heart treatment has also been tested in labs at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, but the work has ground to a halt for the time being - because the insects involved only breed in the summer.

Dr Weston-Davies said the Slovak link had grown up because the Slovak researchers were at the forefront of their field, and cheaper than UK scientists.

He said: "We hope any side-effects will be minimal. It's not in the parasite's interest to harm its hosts. We have injected lots of animals with no ill-effect."

Venture capital company 3i has put up a third of the money to set up Evolutec.

The Natural Environment Research Council has a 15 per cent stake and the rest comes from private investors.

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