The ground beetle of Eupolyphaga sinensis Walker has been used as traditional anti-thrombosis medicine without bleeding risk for several hundreds years and is presently reared as a medicinal insect in China. Recently, fibrinolytic activities have been found in this insect but the component and its detailed mechanism were not characterized and revealed.

In order to identify and characterize the interesting thrombolytic compounds and help in identifying novel thrombolytic candidates, The research team supervised by Prof. Lai Ren from Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences have identified a fibrin(ogen)olytic protein (Eupolytin1) containing both fibrin(ogen)olytic and plasminogen-activating (PA) activities from the beetle, E. sinensis through proteomic analysis combined with pharmacological method. Using thrombus animal model, eupolytin1 was proved to contain strong and rapid thrombolytic ability and safety in vivo, which are better than that of urokinase. Most importantly, no bleeding complications were appeared even the intravenous dose up to 0.12 µmol/kg body weight (3 times of tested dose which could completely lyse experimental thrombi) in rabbits. It is the first report of thrombolytic agents containing both direct-acting fibrin(ogen)olytic and plasminogen-activating activities.

This work is recently published in PLoS ONE 6(3): e17519, the title : A Bi-Functional Anti-Thrombosis Protein Containing Both Direct-Acting Fibrin(ogen)olytic and Plasminogen - Activating Activities.