Nitric oxide particles help infected wax moth larvae survive in University of Reading study

Nitric oxide, a gas the body already produces, breaks down too quickly to serve as a medicine on its own, so a University of Reading–led team packed it into particles far smaller than a speck of dust that release it over several hours and tested that design against bacteria that cause skin infections. In the 2026 study, survival among infected wax moth larvae given the particles was nine in 10, compared with around six in 10 among untreated infected larvae.

The University of Reading reported the findings, which appear in the Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology, dated Nov. 3, 2026. The work is framed as a possible further option for infected wounds that antibiotics struggle to clear, used alongside conventional antibiotics. Vitaliy Khutoryanskiy, a professor at the University of Reading’s School of Pharmacy who led the research, said treatments that work in a different way are urgently needed as bacteria become harder to kill with antibiotics. Nitric oxide, he said, attacks germs on several fronts at once, so bacteria find resistance harder to develop, and the practical task is to store the gas and release it slowly.

The group, which included scientists from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Kazakhstan, first infected wax moth larvae with skin-infection bacteria, then one hour later injected each larva with the nitric oxide–releasing particles. The larvae were watched for three days; most deaths among untreated larvae came within the first day. In separate flask tests in the same study, bacterial counts after one day were between 10,000 and 100,000 times lower in treated flasks than in untreated flasks.

Khutoryanskiy said the work went beyond killing bacteria in the lab and showed the particles could help infected wax moth larvae survive. Those insects, he noted, are becoming increasingly important for testing new treatments, offering a way to see how well a candidate works while reducing the need for experiments on mice and rats. Each wax moth larva weighs about a quarter of a gram, and its body fights germs in ways similar to those of humans, so researchers can check safety and effect in a living creature while relying less on mammals. More studies are needed before the particles could become a treatment for people. Protection that failed to appear in models nearer to human wounds would undercut any tidy line from these larvae to the clinic.