POLISH scientists are in talks to buy technology from a young Welsh biotech company whose potential cure for the MRSA superbug could, quite literally, make your flesh crawl.

ZooBiotic, one of the first ventures to be spun out of an NHS trust, is pioneering the use of maggots among patients with infected wounds, such as leg ulcers and bed sores.

The tiny grubs clean up nasty injuries by devouring dead and dying tissue. Enzymes in their saliva sterilise the infected area by killing bacteria, including the MRSA bug.

ZooBiotic, headed by Sir Roger Jones, chairman of the Welsh Development agency, is evaluating approaches from drug companies in Poland and France to license the technology behind its treatment.

The Polish overture comes amid strong interest in a soon-to-be-aired local television documentary that follows the life of a boy who lost both his legs in a road accident. Polish surgeons claimed that the boy’s life was saved by ZooBiotic’s maggot therapy.

Sir Roger told The Times yesterday that ZooBiotic was excited at the prospects for its science, which relies on a patented process to sterilise the maggots before they are applied to patients. He added that the company would be prepared to license the technology to overseas partners for a 15 per cent share of sales.

Further interest in ZooBiotic is likely to be bolstered by development work at the University of York, where researchers are using the company’s maggots to develop a new treatment against MRSA. Sir Roger said: “They are well on the way to isolating that part of maggot saliva that is a powerful anti-bacterial agent, as well as the concentrations in which it might be most effective.”

Use of maggots as a medical treatment is regulated by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA). The EMEA insists that maggots be regarded as pharmaceuticals, requiring the therapy to undergo years of extensive safety and efficacy tests among volunteers before approval of a treatment for sale to hospitals.

The rule, intended to prevent dealers selling unsterilised maggots over the internet, means that ZooBiotic has yet to secure approval for the treatment, limiting sales opportunities. However, the company is allowed to supply it under strictly regulated conditions while the approval process rumbles on. The therapy was accepted on to the NHS list of prescribable items last year.

The maggots are farmed from the sterilised eggs of the common greenbottle, Lucilia sericata. The flies — kept in 150 tanks at a specialist laboratory in Bridgend — lay their eggs on slabs of sugar-coated liver.

The maggots are applied to wounds when the creatures are a few millimetres long, being placed under special bandages, and they can grow to more than a centimetre by the time that they are removed.

According to Steven Thomas, ZooBiotic’s technical director, opposition to the treatment comes not from patients, but from nurses. “There is a certain yuk factor that we are working to overcome through the use of educational support,” he said. “Once people see what they can do, they tend to forget what they are looking at.”

ZooBiotic sells a pot of 300 maggots — enough to clean a typical ulceritic leg wound, for £55. Since opening for business in 1995, aided by a £5,000 grant from the Bro Morgannwg NHS Trust, the company has supplied more than six million maggots to 1,600 hospitals and research organisations in Britain.

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