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Blowfish Poison Derivative Could Be A Painkiller
Makarand writes "According to this Reuters article, a Vancouver (Canada) based company
is testing a
painkiller derived from blowfish poison.
The drug
has passed two phases of clinical tests and during testing it could ease pain in terminally
ill cancer patients with a dosage of few micrograms. The drug is a sodium channel blocker and works by stopping nerves from sending pain signals to the brain. The company says that the drug does not have the side effects of morphine and is non-addictive. A single blowfish can provide about 600 doses of this drug."
We have so much to learn from nature !!
For example, the use of leeches in in surgeries where increasing circulation and inhibiting clotting are critical, such as reconstructive surgery after breast cancer.
Leeches have a natural anticoagulant in their saliva which increases blood flow through traumatized tissue, helping to keep it alive during lengthy surgeries. Leeches even come with a natural anesthetic and antibiotic to help break down clots and keep the blood flowing.
first thought it be a crypto article?
and of the new drug, let the stimutacs jokes roll! sealab kicks ass!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Does it mean I can now order some Fugu sashimi from the local chemist ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
will run about $500/per dose? Remember recouping R&D is expensive.
While you wait for the order, read a bit about Tetrodotoxin, which was the Molecule of the Month in November 1999.
BSD is dea... Wait a second. Poison? Drugs? Biotech? Shit, wrong topic.
Tetrodotoxin is commonly used in biomedical research to silence neurons. It blocks sodium channels. I had wondered in the past why it did not exist as a drug for humans.
There are many sodium channel blocking anesthetics available now. The drugs that end in -caine are mostly sodium channel blockers. Benzocaine, novacaine and lidocaine are examples.
From the article, it seems that TTX is being investigated for general systemic use rather than as a local anesthetic. There are only vague mentions of injections. I would appreciate more information about the drug's indications and delivery.
Morphine and other opiates are bad because they depress the entire central nervous system -- they deaden everthing. Yet this is also a good quality for treating certain patient cases mentioned by the article. The problem with a blowfish analgesic is that it will alleviate physical pain, but do nothing for the psychological pain of terminal illness. Whereas morphine will make you forget your troubles, blowfish medicine will leave you clearheaded to consider your fate.
Otherwise, blowfish medicine might do wonders for pain associated with surgery and trama. And, its nonaddictive nature might help doctors be less stingy with painkillers. Unfortunately, there remains the issue of whether managed care will cover the costs for mere pain control.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Anyhow, tetrodotoxin fascinated me then, and it does now. Maybe someday I'll be in Japan and actually get to try Fugu and have a first hand experience with a light consumption of tetrodotoxin.
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
I don't see why this is news worthy. Just about *every* single drug today has its origins in some marine life (or bacteria/mold). For instance, many research groups get millions of grant dollars flying to remote areas, cutting up the local inhabitants, and then running cell assays on them. If they make it through a certain number of assays (generally for cytoxicity, but others exist) then they publish the info. Just check out the Journal of Natural Products. Issues upon issues of this stuff. The interesting stuff comes later, when the synthetic organic chemists try to create these things artificially, generally in really low yields. In fact, a project I was working on was the synthesis of a marine ladder toxin that is one of the active compounds in red tide catastrophes (see this book). It too blocks sodium ion channels. Probably the most famous cancer fighting compound, taxol, is isolated from the bark of the pacific yew tree.
Cocaine is a good local anesthetic. It used to be popular for ear procedures. Taken systemically, it acts on the dopaminergic system to get a person really, really high.
We have so much to learn from nature !!
An excellent point, but we need to be cautious. Although we have many medicines derived from natural sources, these natural substances require just as much scrutiny as man-made synthetic ones. Most natural medicines are derived from what amounts to chemical weapons created by organisms to either kill/disable prey or kill/sicken predators. As such, they can have nasty side-effects.
A blowfish, leech, or cannibis plant does not care if a person gets cancer 10 years later, suffers permanent neurological damage, or occasionally dies abruptly. In many cases, extreme toxic reactions are the entire point of the chemical. On the one hand, humans have millions of years of evolution to adapt to these natural chemicals. On the other hand, these organisms have had millions of evolution to create ever nastier defensive/offensive chemicals.
Even long-used natural medicines can be unsafe. Very few cultures have had the inclination and record-keeping skills to correlate medicine consumption with long-term illnesses like cancer, dementia, heart disease, liver disease, etc. Very few cultures have had the numerical sample size to detect medicines that might be fatal on a rare but consistent basis. Despite a multi-thousand-year history of use, it was only in the last few decades that we uncovered the link between willow bark (aspirin) and Reyes syndrome (which is rare but fatal for children).
Just because something is natural, does not make it safe. Whether blowfish toxin or leech saliva make a good medications will take millions of dollars of clinical research and then perhaps millions of patients to discover.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I know this is all in the name of science, but what's Hootie gonna do without the rest of the band?
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.