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The Life-Saving Gifts of the World's Most Venomous Animal (newyorker.com)
tedlistens writes: It was a terrible sting off the coast of Hawaii that inspired Angel Yanagihara, a biology researcher, to spend her life studying the bizarre culprit. Comprising some 50 species, box jellyfish are not like other jellyfish: they have 24 eyes, can move with intention and at surprising speed, and have something resembling a brain. They are also considered to be among the most venomous animals on Earth, killing more people every year than sharks do. Once inside the body, its venom acts "like buckshot" on blood cells. One species, the four-pound, nine-foot-long sea wasp, is said to have enough venom at any one time to kill ninety to one hundred and twenty humans.
As ocean currents and biomes change, various species of dangerous box jellyfish have shown up in places where they have not recently been abundant, including Japan, India, Israel, Florida, and the Jersey Shore. But compared to other venoms, research on jellyfish has remained in the dark ages. New methods for collecting venom—including one that relies on beer—along with a better understanding of box-jelly biochemistry may point to better non-antibiotic protections from them, and to novel defenses for humans against other fatal infections from anthrax and the antibiotic-resistant "superbug" MRSA, says Yanagihara. (Venoms are already the basis of a handful of FDA-approved drugs that have generated billions for the pharma industry.) Now the U.S. military is helping to fund Yanagihara's research, and applying a cream she developed to thwart box jellyfish, which have already left serious stings on a dozen Army divers at a training facility in Florida, and forced one diver out of the program.
As ocean currents and biomes change, various species of dangerous box jellyfish have shown up in places where they have not recently been abundant, including Japan, India, Israel, Florida, and the Jersey Shore. But compared to other venoms, research on jellyfish has remained in the dark ages. New methods for collecting venom—including one that relies on beer—along with a better understanding of box-jelly biochemistry may point to better non-antibiotic protections from them, and to novel defenses for humans against other fatal infections from anthrax and the antibiotic-resistant "superbug" MRSA, says Yanagihara. (Venoms are already the basis of a handful of FDA-approved drugs that have generated billions for the pharma industry.) Now the U.S. military is helping to fund Yanagihara's research, and applying a cream she developed to thwart box jellyfish, which have already left serious stings on a dozen Army divers at a training facility in Florida, and forced one diver out of the program.
Great, but why the hoopla over billions of profits for the pharmaceutical industry? The gouging of consumers with higher and higher drug prices is not a plus. I am not enthralled with the prospect of more huge profits for the drug companies. That money comes from people, many of whom really can't afford to jack up the profits for the wealthy people running big pharma.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
The Irukanji jellyfish is an extremely fucking nasty box jellyfish which is predominately found off the north coast of Australia. Originally it was thought to be localised to that area but they now know they are far more distributed. This jelly fish is the one that has been found off the coast of Japan, India, and Florida. But the thing is they are tiny, about 1cm3 so unless you are getting instances of the syndrome they are really hard to detect.
There is nothing about changing currents or biomes that can be tied to the location of those creatures. They are just really really small so unless you are looking for them you won't see them. I mean it took researchers 12 years to find the damn things in the first place when the syndrome was originally identified and they knew where to look.
Every year they kill something like 100 million sharks, although as there is an awful lot of illegal fishing, the figure could be twice that. If that rate of slaughter continues, one of the oldest types of animals in the Earth's oceans will become extinct in our lifetimes.
According to Wikipedia, sharks have been around for something like 420 million years, which makes them hugely successful. One of the few creatures older are the Jellyfish, so I wonder what will happen to the Jellyfish populations when the sharks are gone?
Sorry, one of my pet hates, and I'm ranting a bit now.
According TFA, ACE inhibitors, a very useful, very common and now very inexpensive medication came from the venom of the Brazilian somethingorother viper. Yes, it went through the period of time when it wasn't generic but once the general active structure was worked out, there was a time when there was the ACE inhibitor of the week club. The dozen or so competing drugs kept the prices sort of reasonable.
So yeah, Big Pharma gets it's cut, but for small molecules (as opposed to biologics which are antibodies which are much harder to manufacture*), once the structure gets out, it's pretty much all over for the original company. The point being that venoms are biologically interesting molecules. Nature has manufactured structures that do neat things to other cells (blow them up, gum up the power plant and a host of other mechanisms). Once we know the structure, we can tweak it. Protein chemistry has come to a point where determining the structure of a complex molecule is basically a PhD thesis. Then you can work on smaller molecules (easier to make) that can modulate the original enzyme. So a whole new class of venoms is a big deal.
* biologicals are now being manufactured by the generics (isn't progress wonderful). Big Pharma is fighting back by trying to get those manufacturers to go through the clinical trials showing safety and utility - a huge time and expense. The problem (from a libertarian point of view) is that Big Pharma has a couple of good points. Biologics aren't the 'same' molecule - they're close. But until we have a lot more experience with them, it is not unreasonable to do the clinical trials. The generic manufacturers, of course, have a different view.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Beer method:
Step 1 - hold my beer...