Dr. Tim Cernak

I mean, initially diabetes and then we learned about the weight loss aspect of it.

I mean, you know, you maybe you could have predicted this.

Maybe Gila monsters hardly eat like they can survive by eating four meals a year.

And yes.

So like if you had have known that you could be like, oh, I bet we could make a weight loss drug off of it.

But it turns out there's like a type of scientist that just goes out into the wild and like decided that they would screen Gila monster spit against diabetes.

Like, wow, this works really, really well.

So anyway, so Pebbles, back to Pebbles, the Gila monster is a local Gila monster here in Ann Arbor that was infected with a parasite and was slated for euthanasia.

And so they're like, you know, there's no treatment for this for this parasite.

this disease.

You, you can't even kill this parasite with bleach.

Like the only, the only known way to kill the parasite before we got engaged was boiling it in water, um, which is not a good medicine.

And, um, we, yeah, we hopped in and, uh, we used our, our, our drug hunting hats, uh, and, and found, um, we, we found a treatment for, for pebbles and, uh, we, uh,

Worked with the Creature Conservancy.

They formulated it up.

We were really nervous.

Remember I said that Gila monsters hardly eat anything?

The planned dose was seven doses of a pill called bromomycin over 14 days.

We're like, how are we going to get her to eat

Um, over, over 14 days.