Yucky helpers: Singapore company breeds ‘fresh’ maggots that are hungry to feed on patients’ wounds as healing therapy The native bronze bottlefly species, the Lucilia cuprina, lay their eggs that hatch into maggots, which are then supplied to hospital and clinics to help with wound therapy. — TODAY pic
The creepy crawlies were courtesy of Carl Baptista, the laboratory director of Cuprina Private Limited, a home-grown medical device company that manufactures and supplies medical-grade maggots. “They have only one purpose. When they hatch, they look for food. As long as you give them food, they behave in the same way, whether the food is a sliver of meat or a chronic infected wound,” he said.
Maggot debridement therapy is used to treat and heal certain chronic wounds that have extensive areas of dead tissue. They are the native bronze bottlefly species, the Lucilia cuprina, and they were housed behind double-walled glass doors in a negative-pressure lab where the temperature and humidity were controlled.
After the eggs are laid, a specific concentration of liquid disinfectant is used to clean them, allowing them to be sterilised yet yield a 70 to 80 per cent hatching rate. Carl Baptista holding a Petri dish of blood agar that tests the eggs of flies. If colonies of bacteria grow on the blood agar, a batch of eggs is considered contaminated and cannot be used for maggot debridement therapy. — TODAY pic
William Teo underwent five cycles of maggot debridement therapy at the National University Hospital. — TODAY pic Maggot debridement therapy is also available at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital but only for a selective group of patients. The therapy has shown some clinical benefits in promoting wound healing and reducing the colonisation of some antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria at the wound bed, but Chen of NUH emphasised that it is only one component of multidisciplinary wound care.
Chen of NUH said that to achieve a clean wound bed, a patient might require two to five cycles, depending on the progress.“After a cycle is completed, we remove the maggots and assess the wound response. At that point, if we think the wound is still not clean enough, we may consider doing more cycles.”“The maggots, it’s surprising, they don’t tend to escape from the wound because all their food is actually on the wound bed,” Chen said.