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Biotech Science

Sea Snail Toxin Offers Promise For Pain 206

Posted by kdawson from the take-two-drops-and-call-me-in-the-morning dept.
Khyber writes to tell us about research out of Australia that holds out hope for chronic pain sufferers. The toxin of a sea snail, called conotoxin, has a component that has been shown to directly target pain receptors in experimental animals. Unlike essentially all existing pain relievers, conotoxin seems to suppress pain without side effects. Human trials are a year away.
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Sea Snail Toxin Offers Promise For Pain More

Sea Snail Toxin Offers Promise For Pain

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  • Toxin...Toxic? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:03PM (#17212680)
    Isn't a Toxin Toxic to people. Or is it just Toxic to the Snail?

    • Re:Toxin...Toxic? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tyler Eaves ( 344284 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:04PM (#17212706)
      It's all in the dosage. *ANYTHING* (even, say oxygen or water) is toxic if given in a high enough dose.
      • The snake on the staff is there for a reason.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by MrLogic17 ( 233498 )
          Yes, but not the reason you think.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehushtan [wikipedia.org]
          Numbers 21:4-9

          (Pardon the King James, couldn't find a modern transation in short order)

          21.6. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. 7. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 8. And the Lord said unto
          • I didn't know that. Thank you for the information.
          • Pardon the King James, couldn't find a modern transation in short order.

            You may want to bookmark http://www.biblegateway.com/ [biblegateway.com] or http://www.blueletterbible.org/ [blueletterbible.org] for future reference.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by torako ( 532270 )
            While your Bible citation applies too, most people would say that the Rod of Asclepius is a symbol of Greek mythology (probably older than your Bible text) Wikipedia text: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Asclepius [wikipedia.org] The summary says:

            The Rod of Asclepius is an ancient Greek symbol associated with astrology and healing the sick with medicine. It consists of a serpent entwined around a staff. Asclepius, the son of Apollo, was practitioner of medicine in ancient Greek mythology. He was instructed in medic

          • Not for the reason you would think. I think you would be looking for the Rod of Asclepius [wikipedia.org], which predates the Nehushtan by a few thousand years. It is possible, however, that the Nehushtan was inspired by the Rod of Asclepius.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by HolyCrapSCOsux ( 700114 )
            Proves the power of prayer when combined with the power of a magic stick.
          • You may also want to read about Dracunculiasis [wikipedia.org]. This is a parasitic worm that can be removed by wrapping the worm around a stick.

        • The snake on the staff...

          As shown here [punkstuff.com].

      • It's all in the dosage. *ANYTHING* (even, say oxygen or water) is toxic if given in a high enough dose.

        Including ethanol, nicotine and caffeine to name a few.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Hatta ( 162192 )
          It's all in the dosage. *ANYTHING* (even, say oxygen or water) is toxic if given in a high enough dose.

          Including ethanol, nicotine and caffeine to name a few.

          With the notable exception of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. There has never been a single fatal case of THC poisoning in all of medical history.
          • You're forgetting charcol. There is no recorded case of charcol poisoning in all of medical history. Heavy metals and their ores sure, but not good ole charcol.

            Finding a medical case that involves charcol in the bloodstream but not massive trauma (limiting the study to victims of massive trauma would make survival studies complicated), or in finding a study subject willing to be injected with solid charcol is left as an exercise to the reader.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tim C ( 15259 )
        "All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous." [or popularly, "The dose makes the poison."] - Paracelsus [wikipedia.org].

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Large dosages of water have been found to cause swimming in laboratory animals.

        (from USENET circa 1985)

    • Re:Toxin...Toxic? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smallfries ( 601545 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:11PM (#17212836) Homepage

      Isn't a Toxin Toxic to people. Or is it just Toxic to the Snail?
      Another way to look at it is read what the submitter really meant. You often have
      to translate slashdot stories. "Unlike essentially all existing pain relievers,
      conotoxin seems to suppress pain without side effects." really means "Like all
      existing drugs that haven't been through large scale trials, conotoxin appears
      to be free from side-effects. The toxicity is probably dependent on the dose, the
      patient, the length of usage and about a million other (currently) unknown
      factors.

  • Misleading title (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:04PM (#17212708)
    Shouldn't it read "Sea Snail Toxin Offers Promise For Pain SUFFERERS"? At first I thought it was an article about some new clever torture method for Gitmo prisoners or something...
  • likes to hang out in karaoke bars, or watch dancing with the stars.... oh, its not the right kind of pain? damn

  • Bitter Irony (Score:5, Insightful)

    by susano_otter ( 123650 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:06PM (#17212742) Homepage
    In before "we must halt all industrial and technological advancements, to stop global warming before we lose all these wonderful natural cures!"

    The bitter irony is that it's these very industrial and technological advancements that make the discovery, analysis, synthesis, mass production, and world-wide distribution at affordable prices of this painkiller possible in the first place.

    It's depressing how many people demand the benefits of civilization, without accepting any of its tradeoffs.

    • Re:Bitter Irony (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:17PM (#17212912) Homepage
      I don't think there are actually that many people who say "we must halt all technological development".

      That's usually the hyperbolic strawman of the anti-conservationist who extrapolates spending money on better alternatives to current tech and trying to use less of what we do now (e.g. drive more fuel efficient cars) into some crazy luddite back-to-nature wildlife.

      Personally I think that point of view is retarded. I'm a conservationist and environmentalist because I like the benefits of civilization, and I would like for myself and as many generations of descendents as possible to be able to keep them.

      One of the tradeoffs of civilization is figuring out how to make it sustainable. Our current method is not sustainable. Refusing to change because you want to keep your lifestyle is to guarantee that you lose that lifestyle.

      Anyway, I think slug-slime pain killers are awesome.
      • I don't think there are actually that many people who say "we must halt all technological development".
        They don't say it that way. Instead, they insist that governments adopt the precautionary principle.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dasunt ( 249686 )
        One of the tradeoffs of civilization is figuring out how to make it sustainable. Our current method is not sustainable. Refusing to change because you want to keep your lifestyle is to guarantee that you lose that lifestyle.

        John Mccarthy (the father of lisp) believes that our progress is sustainable [stanford.edu] in a form remarkably similar to what we have now.

      • I think slug-slime pain killers are awesome.

        Just as a note - it's not slime. It's a toxin injected by a very fast-firing dart the snail uses to hunt. Research on these snails started because every year a few people picked them up on beaches in the Phillipines and dropped dead moments later. Turns out the snails pack a cocktail of toxins that includes the active ingredients in several other well-known venoms. I saw the PriAlt guy speak a few months ago, and it was completely fascinating. Showed video o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jotok ( 728554 )
      world-wide distribution at affordable prices

      Where exactly is this happening?
      Where I'm from--a planet called "Earth"--the lack of widely-distributed and affordable drugs is a pretty big problem, which is currently being exacerbated in innumerable ways due to globalization, although the pundits claimed--still claim--that the opposite should be true.

      It's depressing how many people demand the benefits of civilization, without accepting any of its tradeoffs.

      To me, it's somewhat more depressing how many people fa

      • it seems obvious to me that in the long term the expensive-but-clean process is probably better

        That might be obvious, but are you willing to pay for it? More accurately, are enough of your like minded bretheren willing to pay for it?

        To further derail things, what constitutes 'better'? In the long term is it better to kill all the buffalo to help the natives die so we can drive them off the land we want to develop for the debatable overall improvement of humanity? Better to test snail toxins on rabbits so we can one day keep humans from having to live with pain? Better for that one specific rabb

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jotok ( 728554 )
          Better is not even easy to define in hindsight.

          Granted! But I think universally, solutions that directly produce fewer new problems are superior to solutions that are going to produce more.

          If you know your process is going to be more expensive, you can budget for that. If you know it's going to harm the environment--well, the environment is a pretty delicate toy to be messing around with and there's no warranty. It's like the 360 I got my godson for Christmas--short-term, he might have fun throwing it ar
      • Aspirin and other OTC painkillers are available around the world, at affordable prices.

        In fact, there's hundreds of thousands of widely-distributed, affordably-priced medecins out there.

        Please don't confuse the small number of brand-new, cutting-edge drugs, still paying off their extremely expensive R&D efforts, with the vast majority of affordable medications.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jotok ( 728554 )
          Your point is well-taken, but consider the third world--the desperately poor parts of it. I think in a lot of places they are still working on the "Getting pennecillin past the warlords" bit much less the "Desperately needed AIDS cocktails."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by biocute ( 936687 )
      I guess one has to decide whether:
      1. To advance to a point that you know a cure is available, but the source is long gone, or
      2. To remain ignorant of this cure.

      I used to ask people this question:

      You've been religiously buying the same Lotto number for 20 years, now God offers you two options:

      a. That Lotto number turns out to be the biggest winner in the history, except you forgot to buy it that particular week. At least you know your magic number is a winner, or

      b. That Lotto number is never a winner, and you'll n

      • I see a different dilemma:

        1. Cut back on industrial activity and technological innovation, in order to preserve a naturally-occuring medecine that will require industrial activity and technological innovation in order to be useful, OR

        2. Continue with industrial activity and technological innovation, to better exploit what natural medicines we encounter, as well as more quickly develop synthetic medicines.

        For all we know, we may be six months away from discovering a synthetic painkiller which operates in the

    • Re:Bitter Irony (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rednip ( 186217 ) * on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:43PM (#17213332) Journal

      The bitter irony is that it's these very industrial and technological advancements that make the discovery, analysis, synthesis, mass production, and world-wide distribution at affordable prices of this painkiller possible in the first place.

      So, you think global warming is an advancement. Personally I see it as an accounting issue; hidden costs which some people pass on to other people, in particular future generations. Perhaps the reason why the Northeast is considered so 'liberal' is that one doesn't have to go far to find a brown field. A place of dead earth, unfit for human development, left by some long gone business which was unburdened by environmental regulation. The cleanup of someone else's mess is a continuing burden, both on the treasury, and the health of people who have long ago, if ever, benefited from their creation.

      At one point cities didn't have sewers or trash collection, they just threw their daily waste into the middle of the street. Often the contents of chamber pots would rain down on the pedestrians below, and the rivers became so choked with human and animal filth, that they caused plague, and misery. Eventually cities, and towns raised taxes for sewers, required trash collection, then sanitary sewers, and eventually waste treatment facilities. Today one doesn't think of these things as unnecessary, or too costly, as the benefits of these requirements obviously far outweigh the costs of not having them, yet when the laws were first developed buffoons such as yourself, fought their implementation as being too costly, and unneeded. History has proven those fools wrong, as it will you.

      • So, you think global warming is an advancement.

        Actually, I think global warming is a cyclical phenomenon, of which anthropogenic causes make up an insignificant fraction during this particular cycle; and that the pain and suffering caused by reducing anthropogenic causes will greatly outweigh the benefits (and will not actually have a significant effect on the cycle, since we're still not capable of massive terraforming or weather control).
    • Actually, humans have been doing this without all the technology for many thousands of years in the form of traditional medicines. The advantage to having all this technology is to speed the discovery process up slightly and allow for more people to get at it while still keeping the prices down. Yeah, it also helps in the understanding of why certain chemicals do the things they do, but considering how much knowledge the 'why' actually gives us in terms of medical applications, that particular aspect of med

  • Ouch. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Das Auge ( 597142 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:10PM (#17212806)
    Death, the ultimate pain release...and it's good for weight loss, too.

  • Experimental animals? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jonnythan ( 79727 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:11PM (#17212824)
    "The toxin of a sea snail, called conotoxin, has a component that has been shown to directly target pain receptors in experimental animals." ..... What about regular animals?

    Is that the next step?

    Experimental animals -> regular animals -> experimental humans -> regular humans??

  • Wow.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FunWithKnives ( 775464 ) <<ten.tsirorret> <ta> <tcefrePxodaraP>> on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:12PM (#17212840) Journal
    This could be great for people like me. I suffered a lower-lumbar spinal fracture almost seven months ago. The doctors tell me that, essentially, I have to deal with chronic neck and lower back pain for the rest of my life. I take opiate-based pain medicine twice a day for it. The stuff wigs me out sometimes, though, and I slog through the day in somewhat of a fog. Not good for a college student. Hopefully this will make it to the market, and I can finally get some pain relief without getting "high".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Elbows ( 208758 )
      Kind of off-topic, but you should talk to a massage therapist, acupuncturist, or some other practitioner of "alternative" medicine. They are good at dealing with chronic pain, especially neck and back problems, and can often help people who mainstream doctors have given up on. At the very least, the placebo effect is a powerful thing. ;-)

      Since you're a student, money is probably an issue, but you can most likely find someone who will charge on a sliding scale or otherwise work out a reasonable fee with you.
      • I second this, though I would specifically recommend a Cranial Osteopath [cranialacademy.org] or a registered cranio-sacral therapist [craniosacraltherapy.org] (osteopathic-style manipulation done by a non-osteopath).

        Osteopathy is the knowledge of the structure, relation and function of each part of the human body applied to the adjustment or correction of whatever interferes with the harmonious operation of the same.

        George V. Webster, D.O. 1921 (source [osteohome.com])

        From the original poster:

        I suffered a lower-lumbar spinal fracture almost seven months ago. The docto

        • I agree with all the above. Just wanted to add the real Osteopaths carry a "DO" (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine) at the end of their name and are licensed in just the same way as a Medical Doctor. They meet the same guidelines (and then some) and can prescribe medication just like an MD can.
      • Ive done acupuncture, and I can highly recommend it. The doctor combines it with physical therapy techniques, so you get a very robust treatment.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Manchot ( 847225 )
        Why bother with that when I've got a perfect drug I can sell you? It's called Plasibeau, and it works wonders on all sorts of ailments!
  • I can grind up snails to put on my wounds...

    Or I can get the pretty girl sitting next to me to kiss it better [slashdot.org]
    • Yeh, so after you finish scraping or cutting yourself up in the garden, you can make every,uhh, es-scar-got...
  • And I'm trademarking it.....Announcing "Snotox"(TM)

  • Before anyone else chimes in.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:18PM (#17212930) Homepage Journal
    It's not the toxin itself, rather a component of the toxin that offers the pain relief. The /. editors must've edited that out, from my original entry.

  • Elan already has a Conotixin on the market (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Irish biotechnology company Elan Pharmaceuticals markets the first commercial conotoxin analgesic, ziconotide (Prialt), for intractable nerve pain. It is from the omega-conotoxin family, one of five major families of conotoxins.

    http://www.theage.com.au/news/creative--media/pain killer-comes-out-of-its-shell/2005/07/24/112214372 8598.html [theage.com.au]

  • Links to university release & the article in P (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PrebleNY ( 797307 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:27PM (#17213100)
    here is the press brief from the university's website, includes a picture of Dr Ekberg
    http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=11048 [uq.edu.au]

    and if you have the chops to read the study, here is a link to the abstract
    http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/45/17 030 [pnas.org]

    looks like the full text is free (unless my institution's IP range has a subscriptionn and it would otherwise be locked down)

  • Different from ziconotide? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Wilson_6500 ( 896824 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:46PM (#17213396)
    There's already an anesthetic drug out there that's based off of a conotoxin. Ziconotide, from what I can tell, is a synthetic conotoxin substance based upon omega-conotoxin derived from the cone snail. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has an entry on it, including that it's already in use as the drug "Prialt."

    I don't understand why nothing in the article even mentions this already-existing drug derived from (probably different) conotoxins.

  • At least one conotoxin already commercialized. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @04:50PM (#17213460) Homepage
    A brief look at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] indicates there's already a commercially available drug derived from conotoxin that provides relief from pain:

    -conotoxin inhibits N-type voltage-dependent calcium channels. Because N-type voltage-dependent calcium channels are related to algesia (sensitivity to pain) in the nervous system, -conotoxin has an analgesic effect: the effect of -conotoxin M VII A is 100 to 1000 times that of morphine. Therefore -conotoxin M VII A is used as an analgesic drug named ziconotide [wikipedia.org]; it is marketed under the brand name Prialt®.


    Presumably this is a different component of conotoxin.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by alkaloids ( 739233 )
      Right. The article is horrendously vague, though I guess it has to be. "Conotoxin" is the name of actually a family of different compounds (small peptides) that tend to interact with ion channels. Ion channels are the proteins in neurons that basically transmit electrical information from one end of a neuron to the other. So if you can clog up ion channels, you can stop information transfer - including pain information. There are lots of ion channel types, and lots of different ion channel blockers and

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by StikyPad ( 445176 )
      Prialt has a few caveats [prnewswire.com].

      Be nice if they could find something better than morphine though. I've been on drips twice in my life. (Yeah, I guess I'm accident prone.) Anyway, 1) it's not so much pain relief as much as "I'm so euphoric that I don't care that my arm hurts like a bitch," especially for something like getting a wound scrubbed out with a Brillo pad, 2) the side effects suck and 3) coming down is like the worst hangover you've ever had, only worse. Even thinking about it right now makes me nause
      • The Wikipedia article on Ziconotide [wikipedia.org] gives a slightly more balanced view. To quote:

        Due to the profound side effects or lack of efficacy when delivered through more common routes, such as orally or intravenously, ziconotide must be administered intrathecally (directly into the spine). As this is by far the most expensive and invasive method of drug delivery and involves additional risks of its own,[3] ziconotide therapy is generally considered appropriate (as evidenced by the range of use approved by the FDA

  • Cone Snail Venom (Score:2, Interesting)

    by eli pabst ( 948845 )
    I recently saw a very cool lecture by Baldomero Olivera, one of the people who discovered these compounds in cone snail venom. Apparently back in the day, they were trying to find the compound in cone snail toxin because it was terribly toxic and a lot of people in the Phillipines died from stepping on snails. So they took some cone snail toxin, fractionated it and then injected individual fractions into mice, expecting to see a single fraction that contained the "toxin" compound of interest. Instead, wh
  • Anyone know when these animals will be moved into stable?
  • How Soon Before...my kids in high school start sniffing this stuff? Damn kids these days...
  • . . .more time & effort is spent on hiding a symptom than on finding a cure for the cause.

    I'm a chronic pain sufferer myself - I spend 8 hours a day on a PC and I have RSI in both hands. Yet I wouldn't touch this stuff with a 10-foot pole. The pain is telling you that you're doing yourself damage. Masking the pain so you can do yourself even more damage in complete comfort is the worst thing you could possible do.

    For myself, I learned that improving my posture was enough to stop the RSI causing me a tor

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SydShamino ( 547793 )
      And the guy several posts above who broke his back and has been told by his doctor that he will suffer from chronic pain for the rest of his life? Should we not research medications to ease his pain, so he can better figure out why his back hurts? (Hint: It hurts because he broke it.)

      Just because your chronic pain is self-induced, it doesn't mean all people's pain is so caused.
      • Congratulations on completely missing the point!

        I'll make it easier for you: Which of these is the more beneficial scenario:

        Somebody sustains an injury that causes chronic pain, and millions is spent on developing a new painkiller so the damage won't hurt even though it's still present

        -or-

        Somebody sustains an injury that causes chronic pain, and millions is spent on developing a way to repair the damage so he doesn't suffer from chronic pain.

        I work in the pharmaceutical industry, and I can tell you that far

  •     Of all of the times that's been said of a new drug, I wonder just how rarely it was actually true.

  • Cone shells (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @08:18PM (#17216706) Homepage
    These things are very pretty and very deadly as well.

    The proper name for them is not "sea snails" (there are lots of snails in the sea). The are called cone shells or cone snails. See the Wikipedia article on them [wikipedia.org].

    I used to see them when snorkeling in the Red Sea. They are one of the few snails that are "clean" since they have a mantle withdrawn over the shell and hence algae and barnacles do not attach to it. The other snail that does that is the cowrie shell. If you find a dirty shell, then it is because the animal inside it has died, and the algae has move on it.

    The cone shells are very very toxic and as far as I recall have no antidote. They have a harpoon like needle that injects venom, and a proboscis to swallow prey with.

    One true horror story from Sinai in Egypt was about a woman tourist who was found dead under the water after scuba diving. They took the body out and checked the regulator, the air supply, ...etc and all was good. When they unzipped the wet suit, a live cone shell fell off. What seemed to have happened is that she saw this pretty shell and did not know it was toxic. She just decided to keep it safe and unzipped the suit and tucked it in.

  • > to directly target pain receptors in experimental animals.

    Man, I've got to get me some of those. Here I've been using the traditional, evolved sort. I bet I could get lots better results from my experiments if my animals were experimental too. And then maybe some experimental humans.

  • Pain medication (Score:3, Informative)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @05:28AM (#17220300) Homepage
    Aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil), etc are anti-inflammatory drugs. They block the body's response to provocations which is often what causes most of the pain. They all have the unfortunate side effect of irritating the stomach lining and increasing the chances of getting an ulcer. Nobody really knows how many (mostly elderly) people die from internal bleeding caused by these drugs every year.

    Opiates affect the way the brain perceives pain. They work great and are relatively safe - but addictive. Some people find them pleasurable but most people don't really enjoy the experience. Both groups can become addicted if they use them often enough. The first group is simply more likely to do so for non-medical reasons.

    Nobody is really sure how acetaminophen (Tylenol) actually works. It appears to be a variant on anti-inflammatory drugs with fewer side effects but it may also have some direct effect on the brain. It's safe and effective for minor pains but its usefulness is limited for severe pain because larger doses are toxic to the liver. This one also kills many people every year who don't take the warnings seriously. Many of the victims are children.

    A new drug that affects the pain receptors directly could be a welcome addition to this arsenal.

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