Milk from Tasmanian devils could be the new weapon in the war against superbugs - maybe even cancer - but obtaining it is best left to the experts.
PhD candidate Emma Peel, 24, was part of a Sydney University team that analysed properties in devil milk which can kill bacterial and fungal infections, including some superbugs which are notoriously resistant to antibiotics.
The infection-fighting properties of antimicrobial peptides had been studied in animals before, however how they benefitted Tasmanian devils had remained, up until recently, "relatively unexplored", the team noted.
The researchers looked the devils' fight against the contagious Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) which was estimated to have wiped out up to 80 per cent of the animals on the island state since it was first detected in 1996.
Devils are now understood to be developing their own resistance to DFTD, sparking the hope the species can save itself.
Juvenile devils do not catch the disease and Emma Peel and her team think that may be partly due to cathelicidins, a predominant family of antimicrobial peptides within devils and other mammals.
"We extracted the cathelicidin sequence from the Tasmanian devil genome and had peptides artificially made," she explained.
The results showed the synthesised peptides as being effective in killing a number of pathogens, including the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as golden staph.
Tests also concluded the peptides were "3 to 6 times more effective" against a range of fungal infections than a common anti-fungal medication.
"These peptides are killing superbugs, so there is potential for future development into antibiotics," Ms Peel said.
"That is the next step for our research, to see if these peptides have anti-cancer potential, if they are killing superbugs maybe they could kill the facial tumour."
Asked how do you extract milk from a Tasmanian devil, Emma answered with a laugh "very, very carefully and with a lots of safety gear", before she admitted she had left that job to the devils' keepers.
The process, she said, was similar to milking a cow, "except they lay on their back".
And every devil was different, with some being more feisty than others.
"It really does depends on the devil ... their temperament varies quite a lot."
Ms Peel said the research had been three years in the making, and she hoped to continues her studies in Australia.
"I have one more year to go on my PhD, so there a lot more research to come out," she said.
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