The story

Hans Boman, Birgitta Agerberth and Gudmundur Gudmundsson at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found the human cathelicidin in 1995, first as FALL-39 in bone marrow. Its active 37 amino acid form was named LL-37. In 2005 Adrian Gombart showed the gene is a direct target of vitamin D, and in 2006 Philip Liu and Robert Modlin showed that macrophages use vitamin D to make it against tuberculosis. Russian work in St. Petersburg tied cathelicidins, vitamin D and tuberculosis together and measures them in newborns and lung disease. Swedish groups then took LL-37 into hard-to-heal leg ulcers.