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New and Improved Deadly Snail Venom
SoyChemist writes "In 2004, the FDA approved the cone snail venom ziconotide (Prialt) for the treatment of chronic pain. It is only used for severe cases because it must be injected directly into the spinal column. This month, researchers from the University of Utah have reported the discovery of a new snail venom with a completely different amino acid sequence. Because it very selectively attaches to and blocks nerve signals by binding to a particular type of acetylcholine receptor without causing any collateral damage, the newly discovered venom could also become a fantastic medical tool."
"Of course, their insistence that ground rhino horn will bring back a man's impotent tallywhacker....the jury's still out."
No, the jury's not in any sense out. It doesn't work. And therein lies the problem with traditional medical "knowledge" - for every valid remedy there are four which are pure codswallop.
I am trolling
I'm afraid you imagine wrong, at least in a theoretical sense. Side effects (and primary effects) are determined solely by the interaction of the chemical(s) with the human body, and there's no overarching difference between synthetic and naturally occurring chemicals - when you get down to it, it's all just a bunch of quarks and electrons. It tends to be possible to create more complex compounds naturally, however. So when we manufacture penicillin, we get some mould to secrete the basic ingredient, then substitute on different chemical groups to obtain different effects in the body - to produce a stronger, faster acting compound, with fewer or lesser side effects - hopefully. When it comes down to it though, lead compounds for drugs aren't really designed, they're discovered. Most of those compounds - like those that spawned aspirin, paracetamol, penicillin and the like - are naturally occurring. I suppose a few must have been discovered in synthetic compounds, but not many. The reason being that natural compounds, due to the way they are produced, can be much more complex. Drugs can have many chiral centres, and in classic syntheses, you'd obtain a mixture of all the different possible isomers - usually only one works. When an enzyme produces the feedstock, the compound is more likely to be a pure, or purer mixture, since the shape of the enzyme tends only to catalyse the production of one isomer. This restricts synthetic medicines to much simpler molecules until our synthetic procedures improve (which they are doing - designer molecules are becoming possible.) Even then, however, we have some way before we look at the shape of receptor sites and try and devise molecules to fit them. We are still at the stage where we notice a compound has a physiological effect, and then start looking closer.
im in ur