Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says you're toxic. I'm
Speaker 1: slipping under. I'm Joe McCormick, I'm Lauren, and our regular
Speaker 1: host Jonathan Strickland is not with us this week. He
Speaker 1: is having a wonderful time somewhere other than the office,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing to do occasionally, or so
Speaker 1: I've heard. But if you've been listening to this podcast
Speaker 1: for a while, you probably know Lauren and I sort
Speaker 1: of have a tradition that when Jonathan's away, the Scorpions
Speaker 1: will play, or or the creepy Crawley's of some kind.
Speaker 1: Whenever Jonathan is out, we tried to do a podcast
Speaker 1: about bugs, and it's surprisingly fruitful in terms of future technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who knew. Um, So today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: something that was an idea Lauren had and I think
Speaker 1: it actually turned out really cool, the potential for future
Speaker 1: technologies and current developing medical technologies based on positive uses
Speaker 1: of venom venom animal venom. Yes, Lauren, do you have
Speaker 1: a venom story? Have you ever been stung or bitten?
Speaker 1: By any kind of creature that put poison under your skin. Uh, No,
Speaker 1: that's a boring answer. No good spiderbytes, scorpion stings, anything like. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I've gotten like a tiny spider
Speaker 1: bite once or twice, but I mean, you know, or
Speaker 1: like an ant bite. Our ants venomous? Yes, yes, they
Speaker 1: are many creatures that inject some kind of poison into
Speaker 1: your body are venomous. Wait a minute, now, I think
Speaker 1: we're having a little vocabulary mix up because I think
Speaker 1: you just said poison, and that's not exactly the same
Speaker 1: thing as venom, is it. No, it's not, though in
Speaker 1: sort of popular parlance it might be. But let's let's
Speaker 1: talk the science talk what does it actually mean? And when,
Speaker 1: like a biologist says venom versus poison? Well, I was
Speaker 1: curious about this, so I looked it up and there
Speaker 1: there's a paper called complex Cocktails, the Evolutionary Novelty of Venoms.
Speaker 1: That was it was report in Trends in Ecology and Evolution,
Speaker 1: and this gave the following definition of venoms. Specifically, they
Speaker 1: said it's a secretion produced in a specialized gland in
Speaker 1: one animal and delivered to a target animal through the
Speaker 1: infliction of a wound, regardless of how tiny it could be,
Speaker 1: which contains molecules that disrupt normal physiological or biochemical processes
Speaker 1: so as to facilitate feeding or defense by the producing animal.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a mouthful, but it has a lot
Speaker 1: of detail there. That's kind of a good MEATIA definition.
Speaker 1: So it it includes that it's not a passive distribution
Speaker 1: of the chemical. It's produced by the host animal. Uh.
Speaker 1: The animal delivers it to another animals somehow through like
Speaker 1: a bite. There's some kind of injection and it facilitates
Speaker 1: either defense or or predatory behavior. And this sort of
Speaker 1: goes in line with a popular definition just for the
Speaker 1: common speech level. I looked it up in Mariam Webster.
Speaker 1: They said venom was a poison that's produced by an
Speaker 1: animals such as a snake, used to kill or injure
Speaker 1: another animal through biting or stinging. Uh So, basically, the
Speaker 1: difference between a venom and a poison is the delivery
Speaker 1: vector of the icky stuff, and venoms are injected by
Speaker 1: like specialized usually like hypodermic needle like teeth or stingers,
Speaker 1: and poisons are just secreted, uh like in lazy lazy frogs, oh,
Speaker 1: the poison dart frogs. Yeah. Yeah, they're the hippies of
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom. I'm telling you right right, because they
Speaker 1: just wait for you to come up and handle them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's how they get you. Yeah. So the easy
Speaker 1: rubric I guess is that if you seese up an
Speaker 1: die after an animal bites you or stings you, that
Speaker 1: animal was venomous. But if you die after you eat
Speaker 1: an animal or you catch it and rub it all
Speaker 1: over your naked flesh, that animal was probably poisonous. Probably,
Speaker 1: Although it's a good rule of thumb to not go
Speaker 1: around eating animals if you're not sure that they don't
Speaker 1: contain little sacks of really potent neurotoxins I, unless you're
Speaker 1: really sure of what you're doing. Um, eating a venomous
Speaker 1: snake is really just as bad as eating a poisonous snake.
Speaker 1: And there are poisonous snakes. Some snakes are both venomous
Speaker 1: and poisonous. Really, like a snake that would be poisonous
Speaker 1: to eat or handle? Yeah, bad times, Stay away from
Speaker 1: that guy. I always thought that the use of poisonous
Speaker 1: snake was just kind of like people using the word wrong.
Speaker 1: So different different animals have all kinds of different stuff
Speaker 1: going on. How true that is? And in fact, I
Speaker 1: came across a really interesting little fact on the side
Speaker 1: while I was researching for this episode. So, some poisonous animals,
Speaker 1: like the family of poison dart frogs, don't actually make
Speaker 1: their own poison, but they acquire it from the environment
Speaker 1: they live in. So it's thought that they eat some
Speaker 1: kind of poisonous prey and then they appropriate that poison
Speaker 1: into the poison that they wear on their skins. So
Speaker 1: you rubbed the frog all over you and then you
Speaker 1: get sick or die, that's actually because of something that
Speaker 1: the frog itself acquired from nature. Okay, so let's do
Speaker 1: a few quick Venom facts before we get into the
Speaker 1: Venom tech. Joe and I might be really excited about this.
Speaker 1: If you cann't tell listeners, well, I just yeah, I
Speaker 1: love venom wisdom Venom is that? Does that have something
Speaker 1: to do as Spider Man, because I don't feel like
Speaker 1: Venom had a lot of going on in the wisdom category.
Speaker 1: You are much more the comic book nerd around here.
Speaker 1: I think you know more about venom than I do.
Speaker 1: As we've established, I'm sort of a fake geek he's
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of a raging i'd sort of so, yeah,
Speaker 1: okay at any rate? Yeah, no, no no, no, just so
Speaker 1: venom facts. Yeah. Yeah. So the obvious question that always
Speaker 1: comes up, it's like it's sort of the kids playground argument, right,
Speaker 1: what's the most venomous animal in the world. But actually
Speaker 1: that's a question that's kind of hard to answer because
Speaker 1: you can't measure it by which ones kill the most
Speaker 1: animals or humans, because this might be based more on
Speaker 1: like which ones were exposed to the most options, number
Speaker 1: of bytes, access to healthcare, and anti venom after you
Speaker 1: get bittendis lots of these things. And it's not like
Speaker 1: a venom has a base level of toxicity that there's
Speaker 1: an easy litmus test for. It's it's really just how
Speaker 1: does it interact with cells? And and most venoms are
Speaker 1: made up of multiple proteins and peptides that have different
Speaker 1: effects on different cell structures, right, So one venom might
Speaker 1: have a bunch of different toxins in it, right. Um.
Speaker 1: The old method for measuring toxicity is called a substances
Speaker 1: l D fifty, which is the lethal dose l D
Speaker 1: of a substance that will kill of test animals. It's
Speaker 1: measured by the weight of the substance needed per one
Speaker 1: or one m, depending on how big of a critter
Speaker 1: you're talking about of the test animals body weight, so
Speaker 1: low numbers are more deadly. For for example, a box
Speaker 1: jellyfish's venom has an l D fifty of zero point
Speaker 1: zero four. Uh, don't eat their stingers, that would be bad. Um.
Speaker 1: A coral snakes LD fifty is one point three um.
Speaker 1: And now if this method sounds like a lot of
Speaker 1: animals were harmed in the making of this this research,
Speaker 1: you're correct, and that's why people don't use it so
Speaker 1: much anymore because it involves killing a whole lot of
Speaker 1: test animals. Really yeah, bad times. So a lot of
Speaker 1: times you'll see animals when when we're setting up these
Speaker 1: great venom competitions separated into different animal groups. So some
Speaker 1: people say, for example, that the most venomous snake might
Speaker 1: be the inland type hand snake of Australia. A lot
Speaker 1: of these things hang out in Australia and they really do.
Speaker 1: Like these funnel web spiders like those those are just
Speaker 1: like these little eight like a Darth vaders that live
Speaker 1: on the ground in Australia. I feel bad for If
Speaker 1: we have any Australian listeners, please right in tell us
Speaker 1: about all the venomous creatures that you find in your
Speaker 1: bed at night. Uh but yeah, so the inland type hand. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: the amount of venom usually delivered in one bite by
Speaker 1: this snake is enough to kill a hundred adult men. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: we have ways of treating this. We have an effective
Speaker 1: anti venom. By the way, do a quick Google image
Speaker 1: search if you're listening on a computer of the inland
Speaker 1: type hand. It does this thing where it raises a
Speaker 1: coiled section of its upper body up off the ground,
Speaker 1: and it looks so intimidating it's almost funny. It looks
Speaker 1: like it's some kind of like snake shaped airplane. In
Speaker 1: mid take off, it's like winding up into the sky.
Speaker 1: In the next frame, it'll be off the ground, all right.
Speaker 1: Also another fact, taipan apparently means something like big shot
Speaker 1: or tycoon in Chinese. That's beautiful, that's that. And the
Speaker 1: spelling of that, if you're trying to look it up,
Speaker 1: is t A I P A N. So go go
Speaker 1: check that out. Um. But uh yeah, other other creatures,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, a lot. Lots of things are
Speaker 1: venomous that you probably already know about, but some really
Speaker 1: interesting ones. We wanted to hit on a couple. Yeah. One,
Speaker 1: I really like our cone snails. You know about these
Speaker 1: cone snails? Cone snails? Look them up? They live under
Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. Some cone snails shoot prey with these
Speaker 1: bio harpoons they have containing neurotoxins. Snails have a lot
Speaker 1: of have a lot of harpoons going on, guys, anyway,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Yeah, there are also species of cone snail
Speaker 1: that I just read about this today. They attack their
Speaker 1: prey with blasts of insulin, which cripples fish by drastically
Speaker 1: lowering their blood sugar, and then the snails can just
Speaker 1: kind of lurp them up. Yeah. Yeah, there's apparently a
Speaker 1: couple of different species of kinds down. Some of them
Speaker 1: have these little harpoons, and others have this kind of
Speaker 1: area effect. They they sort of let loose this this
Speaker 1: miasma of toxin stuff. And one of those toxins is insulin,
Speaker 1: And that's crazy to me. They're they're looking into using, um,
Speaker 1: the production of this insulin for like diabetes research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that highlights something we're going to talk about in
Speaker 1: the medical tech part of this episode, which is that
Speaker 1: a lot of these toxins can have a positive effect
Speaker 1: on the body in one way or another if you
Speaker 1: have a specific kind of thing you need to do,
Speaker 1: because these toxins are designed by evolution to be efficacious
Speaker 1: to create some kind of change in animal bodies, right,
Speaker 1: and if that's the kind of change you want to
Speaker 1: create to help somebody's medical condition, it can be good news.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. Um. One more that is not useful
Speaker 1: as far as we know is platypus venom Did you guys,
Speaker 1: were you aware that platypuses are venomous? I did not
Speaker 1: know this before today. Is this common knowledge? I thank
Speaker 1: you for not using the word platypie. That's not a word.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it is correct. I think
Speaker 1: it's like octopuses, Like people have slowly started losing that
Speaker 1: bizarre poor latin um. I think I might have heard
Speaker 1: that platypuses are venomous. But tell me about it, Okay. So,
Speaker 1: male platypuses specifically have spurs on their hind legs, like
Speaker 1: one on each hind leg that can provide a sting um.
Speaker 1: Females are born with these spurs, but they fall off
Speaker 1: before they reach adulthood. Um. And these spurs are used
Speaker 1: in defense against predators because I mean, I would not
Speaker 1: attack a platypus because it's really cute. But I understand
Speaker 1: that not everything in the wild has those reluctances. But um,
Speaker 1: they can also be used. The spurs can also be
Speaker 1: used used offensively during mating season against against platypuses competitors
Speaker 1: for a specific mate. I'm yeah, yeah. Um. They deliver
Speaker 1: enough of a punch to to kill something the size
Speaker 1: of a of a platypus or say a dog, but
Speaker 1: not a human, although their venom does cause a great
Speaker 1: deal of pain in humans, and it does so by
Speaker 1: some neurotoxin mechanism that is not regulated by morphine. So
Speaker 1: so if you get stung by a platypus and you
Speaker 1: go ow lots of ow, and a normal doctor response
Speaker 1: would be to be like, well, oh, here's some morphine
Speaker 1: that will help you feel not ow anymore. Doesn't work?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, that's crazy. It's like they thought of everything,
Speaker 1: you know, though, I do have to imagine in the wild,
Speaker 1: most platypus deaths are the result of over zealous nineteenth
Speaker 1: century naturalists from like the Great London Society that that
Speaker 1: sounds likely. It's a very sad there should really be
Speaker 1: a conservancy group, Pip Pip. Yeah. But despite all this,
Speaker 1: I want to highlight that it's really important not to
Speaker 1: demonize venomous animals, especially platypus. Is right, we don't need
Speaker 1: to wipe platypuses off the face of the earth. We
Speaker 1: don't need to get rid of the inland type. And
Speaker 1: generally these animals are not very threatening to humans. They
Speaker 1: just want to be left alone. Venom is a strength
Speaker 1: trait that these creatures possessed to survive, just like your
Speaker 1: dogs teeth and jaw muscles, or your meaty hands which
Speaker 1: I point out are perfect for punching and strangling, or
Speaker 1: your big mutant brain. I mean, all kinds of creatures
Speaker 1: have defense and predation mechanisms. Just because it's scary to
Speaker 1: you doesn't mean that these creatures are worth being looked
Speaker 1: at a scance, right right, And as we mentioned briefly
Speaker 1: earlier and are about to go into in detail, a
Speaker 1: lot of the venoms that these things produce have these
Speaker 1: awesome medical uses, another reason not to demonize them. Yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of time venoms are neurotoxins. These see, they
Speaker 1: affect the nervous system and can cause on on the
Speaker 1: negative end, anything from like dizziness to difficulty breathing, to
Speaker 1: blurred vision to muscle seizure. And and that idea in
Speaker 1: nature is generally to either paralyzed prey so that you
Speaker 1: can eat it yea um, or to hurt predators enough
Speaker 1: so that you can escape from them. And uh. Other
Speaker 1: toxins might like affect other types of cells like blood
Speaker 1: or skin cells, which um you know, usually by killing
Speaker 1: them by like rupturing the cell walls or something like that.
Speaker 1: One really common one, um you might have heard of
Speaker 1: it before, is using a proteins from snake venoms to
Speaker 1: help dissolve blood clots in patients experiencing a heart attack
Speaker 1: or a stroke. I think that's kind of the the
Speaker 1: commonly heard of venom technology. Um, but lots of toxins
Speaker 1: can be very useful. Yeah, And in fact, we already
Speaker 1: use all kinds of toxins from venom in medical research today.
Speaker 1: And we wanted to highlight a few of the strangest
Speaker 1: and cool idea as we came across, and especially the
Speaker 1: kind of upcoming ones things that are still being sort
Speaker 1: of ironed out. Yeah, so I want to talk about
Speaker 1: attacking brain tumors with scorpion venom. Okay, let's pretty weird idea.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I would not. I mean if I had
Speaker 1: a brain tumor and my first thought would not be
Speaker 1: let's get some scorpions, Well, it might be soon, and
Speaker 1: I want to paint a picture for you and help
Speaker 1: explain why this would be. So. So let's say you
Speaker 1: have a tumor in your brain. Obviously you want to
Speaker 1: get that tumor out of there. Yes, So you need
Speaker 1: to have a surgical procedure where they go in, they
Speaker 1: open up your skull and they remove all the tumor
Speaker 1: tissue so that it doesn't spread to other parts of
Speaker 1: your body or keep growing and eventually kill you. So
Speaker 1: you want to cut out all of the cancer cells
Speaker 1: while we're moving as little healthy tissue as possible. But
Speaker 1: especially in the brain, that's really tricky. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well it's not always as easy to tell the difference
Speaker 1: as you might think. So you can take a pre
Speaker 1: op m r I. You can put somebody in an
Speaker 1: m r I machine and get a picture of the
Speaker 1: inside of their head to try to get some idea
Speaker 1: of what the edges of the tumor look like. But
Speaker 1: this isn't perfect and you can miss sections and that's
Speaker 1: really bad. This often happens. You hear about this, people
Speaker 1: going to have a brain tumor removed, and it only
Speaker 1: turns out later like, oh no, right, we didn't get
Speaker 1: all of it, and then they might have to have
Speaker 1: another surgery, and uh, it's a very bad thing. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, if you cut too much, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the brain here, it's pretty obvious why that is
Speaker 1: not a good option. You don't want to remove healthy tissue.
Speaker 1: You can have debilitating effects. So there's a guy named
Speaker 1: Jim Olson who's a pediatric oncologist, mean he treats cancer
Speaker 1: and children and a clinical researcher at the Fred Hutchinson
Speaker 1: Cancer Research Center in Seattle, And for a while now
Speaker 1: he's been leading research on a medical technology to help
Speaker 1: with this problem. And it's called tumor paint. Tumor paint,
Speaker 1: weird name, but hold on for a second here and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll explain how it works. So, tumor paint is
Speaker 1: a protein linked fluorescent dye and it's derived from a
Speaker 1: toxin that you find in the venom of a death
Speaker 1: stalker scorpion. Death stalker scorpion. Best name for an animal
Speaker 1: ever come up with by anyone, the death stalker scorpion.
Speaker 1: So the relevant toxin is called chloro toxin, and this
Speaker 1: is a toxin that works by blocking chloride ion channels
Speaker 1: and cells. And the death stalker scorpion uses the toxin
Speaker 1: to paralyze its prey, which would be you know, tasty
Speaker 1: insects like cockroaches or something, to paralyze them, not not
Speaker 1: monom eatum up. The thing about chlorotoxin is that it's
Speaker 1: not toxic to humans. Side note, this does not mean
Speaker 1: that death stalker venom is harmless to humans. There is
Speaker 1: other stuff in there that will get you. Don't go
Speaker 1: playing with those things in general, do not go play
Speaker 1: with scarpions. No. But when applied to humans, chlorotoxin actually
Speaker 1: tends to bind or it's sort of like prefers to
Speaker 1: bind to glioma cells. And that's one type of it's
Speaker 1: a particular type of brain cancer cell. So you make
Speaker 1: the tumor paint by joining two ingredients, you've got a
Speaker 1: chlorotoxin based substance that does what it does. It binds
Speaker 1: to these tumor cells in the body. It seeks out
Speaker 1: the cancer cells and it penetrates them and then linked
Speaker 1: to that, you've got to die. That lights up when
Speaker 1: viewed under a special camera and lit up with a
Speaker 1: near infrared laser. So in the surgical context, what you
Speaker 1: do is you have someone with a brain tumor and
Speaker 1: you're about to go in for surgery, and you inject
Speaker 1: some tumor paint into the patient. It binds to the
Speaker 1: cancer cells in the brain tumor, and then the surgeon
Speaker 1: can shine that near infrared laser at the brain section
Speaker 1: to make a hidden tumor into a glow in the
Speaker 1: dark tumor, and it's easy to disting ship from the
Speaker 1: surrounding tissue, and viewed through that special camera that they
Speaker 1: have right next to the operating table, it glows this
Speaker 1: blue green. Therefore, it's easier for the surgeon to manage
Speaker 1: the margins with precision, you know, getting all of the
Speaker 1: cancer with without removing too much healthy tissue around the sides.
Speaker 1: According to s September press release from the Fred Hutchinson Center,
Speaker 1: version of tumor paint called b l Z one hundred
Speaker 1: was approved for clinical trials in the United States. And
Speaker 1: that's really exciting news, but it's also a reminder that
Speaker 1: you know, the safety and efficacy of this method is
Speaker 1: not fully proven yet and the treatment has a lot
Speaker 1: of testing left to undergo, so we don't know everything
Speaker 1: about it yet. But it's really interesting and exciting that
Speaker 1: this could be a big breakthrough and how to help
Speaker 1: people with brain tumors. But as great as it sounds,
Speaker 1: it might not be the only application of tumor paint.
Speaker 1: In addition to these brain cancer cells the glioma, it
Speaker 1: might be useful in pinpointing other can't your cells like
Speaker 1: lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal and sarcoma's. They've
Speaker 1: even talked about using it to pinpoint non pigmented skin
Speaker 1: cancer cells that are hard to see. Wow. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh that's terrific. None, none of the things that I
Speaker 1: have been researching for for this podcast are quite at
Speaker 1: the clinical trial stage yet. They're all still being done
Speaker 1: in in animal testing, but are nonetheless pretty exciting. Um
Speaker 1: there there's some indication that a particular type of spider
Speaker 1: venom could be the viagra of the future. Really now, see, okay,
Speaker 1: I have to reveal here. Oh this that sounds weird No,
Speaker 1: I was just going to say that, I am. I
Speaker 1: don't like spiders, okay, I mean, I really appreciate them
Speaker 1: as animals. Actually, I love looking like at pictures of
Speaker 1: spiders on the computer and stuff. I don't like it
Speaker 1: when they're in my house. They kind of freaked me out.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's completely understandable. There's a whole science
Speaker 1: behind why we find spiders super creepy. Um. They they
Speaker 1: set off all of these evolutionary things that are like,
Speaker 1: why is that thing moving that way? And why is
Speaker 1: it scuttling towards me? Um, scuttling. The scuttling has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with it. They do seem like, even
Speaker 1: though they're quite common on Earth, they seem like aliens. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. They're super creepy. I think they're very beautiful.
Speaker 1: But um, okay. So one side effect of some arthur
Speaker 1: pod venoms is priapism, which is after the gods, right,
Speaker 1: is it is that? How that gets there? That's cool?
Speaker 1: I believe I believe he was a an amorous deity
Speaker 1: of Greek origin. Okay, yes, so, so priapism is a
Speaker 1: painfully extensive erection, all right, um of the penile tissue
Speaker 1: and uh specifically two or three Arthur pods, all of
Speaker 1: them from Brazil. We've got the extremely toxic Brazilian wandering
Speaker 1: spider and the Brazilian yellow scorpion um have been the
Speaker 1: two that I've seen most commonly researched for this. Um
Speaker 1: that they have venoms containing chemicals that can cause priapism
Speaker 1: in their victims. Now, obviously that's not a condition you
Speaker 1: want to seek out actually occurs, No, I would not.
Speaker 1: I mean they're also pretty deadly and that is awful. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh so, okay, it was a good while before anyone
Speaker 1: really tracked down what these chemicals are. But because erectile
Speaker 1: dysfunction is a shall we say, fertile business is a
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar industry, UM researchers have been working on it,
Speaker 1: and to be serious, it really is a very important
Speaker 1: quality of life issue, especially in men who have lost
Speaker 1: function as a side effect of, you know, receiving really
Speaker 1: important treatment for serious diseases like prostate cancer. UM So,
Speaker 1: it's it's not all goofy ha ha, penis times um
Speaker 1: so so around though, a group out of the Medical
Speaker 1: College of Georgia, which is here in Georgia. It's down
Speaker 1: in augusta UM started isolating a peptide called p n
Speaker 1: t X two dash six. Okay, so this is a
Speaker 1: specific peptide found in the venom of these Brazilian Yes,
Speaker 1: and I do not understand how this process works. UM.
Speaker 1: According to studies that these researchers released, the peptide effects
Speaker 1: excitable ion channels, mainly sodium channels. So I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it has to do with the chemical activation of electromuscular responses. UM.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, it happens to target or or I guess
Speaker 1: more precisely preferentially localize in penile tissues, sort of the
Speaker 1: same way that your your your brain cancer tumor paint
Speaker 1: stuff UM preferentially selects brain cancers else. So Uh, nature
Speaker 1: is great, UM and terrifying. But wait a minute, does
Speaker 1: this mean we're going to have people like people in
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical industry like mass milking spiders to create pills
Speaker 1: for rectile dysfunction. Uh No, which is good, because that
Speaker 1: is the worst thing I've thought of all day. Um. No, No,
Speaker 1: no one is planning huge farms filled with deadly spiders. Um.
Speaker 1: Some peptides, as it turns out, are really easy to
Speaker 1: recreate artificially in labs, generally by by scooping out bits
Speaker 1: of DNA from bacteria and replacing them with the genetic
Speaker 1: code for the production of whatever peptide you want to create. UM. So,
Speaker 1: so you're just turning bacteria into little peptide cows um
Speaker 1: and and and this is one of those peptides that
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to do that with. UM. The next
Speaker 1: one that we are going to talk about is as well. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, every time you get the chance, you bring
Speaker 1: it back to bees. Are you going to talk about bees?
Speaker 1: So going to talk about bees? Why do you love
Speaker 1: bees so much? Because they're the best? Because I love bees.
Speaker 1: If I didn't love bees as much as you did,
Speaker 1: I'd say, not the bees. But I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say that, So instead, Lauren, please the bees, please? All right. So,
Speaker 1: supposedly be venom has been used in medicine for thousands
Speaker 1: of years already. Hippocrates is said to have used it
Speaker 1: in the treatment of arthritis. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a downer about that, but I get the feeling
Speaker 1: looking at some of this bee venom literature that I
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of kind of hokey claims
Speaker 1: out there about Oh be venom, it'll do this, it'll
Speaker 1: do that, Get yourself stung by a bee, it'll be terrific. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It sounds like one of those old world kind of
Speaker 1: remedies where it's like, oh, no, you've got the rheumatism,
Speaker 1: Go rub your face on the bark of a tree
Speaker 1: that was used to hang a man who stole the duck. Well,
Speaker 1: there there are some alternative medicine claims that I am
Speaker 1: not sure of the veracity of about be venom out there,
Speaker 1: and I certainly do not recommend that anyone go out
Speaker 1: and get themselves stung by bees in order to cure
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you want to cure. But b
Speaker 1: venom is being her being year no uh, or it's
Speaker 1: being investigated rather for for cancer therapies scientists, by legit scientists,
Speaker 1: not by all farmer Jim down by the watering hole. Well,
Speaker 1: let's hear all about it, all right. So there was
Speaker 1: a study done at Washington University in stan Louis that
Speaker 1: was published in two thousand nine took one of the
Speaker 1: operative toxins in b venom, which is a peptide called
Speaker 1: malitten or molten or meltinin or something to that extent,
Speaker 1: but at any rate that they can insert malitten into
Speaker 1: nanoparticles called flora carbons, which you may remember us talking
Speaker 1: about in our episode on artificial blood back in August. Okay,
Speaker 1: so these were kind of like they wanted to create
Speaker 1: artificial oxygen carrying cells. Right. As it turns out, these
Speaker 1: things were really crap at delivering oxygen, but they're pretty
Speaker 1: good at delivering venom peptides. Just what I needed, and
Speaker 1: I'm out of blood. To give me some venom, right,
Speaker 1: that's what runs through mob blood UM and AH. In
Speaker 1: a ridiculous or possibly ridiculously brilliant like research marketing move,
Speaker 1: the team chose to call these um mulighten bonded per
Speaker 1: flora carbons nanobees. Nanobees. Nanobes. They know how to get
Speaker 1: some media attention. Nanobees, y'all. Nanobees. That's a good word.
Speaker 1: It feels good to say. They sting cancer tumors to
Speaker 1: death was an actual headline that appeared on the Telegraph.
Speaker 1: The Telegraph also knows how to do headlines. They do nanobees.
Speaker 1: I dare you, I dare you listener to look at
Speaker 1: the word nanobees like a head write it down on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper on your computer right now and
Speaker 1: look at it and try not to laugh. Na, it's
Speaker 1: physically impossible. It's the best word, Okay, But seriously, um
Speaker 1: so they so they added to these nanoparticles, um the
Speaker 1: the b venom peptide maliten, and also a targeting agent
Speaker 1: that binds to a particular molecule that's found on the
Speaker 1: surface of newly developing blood vessels, which tumors are super
Speaker 1: rife with. Yeah, um so uh. As as a bonus
Speaker 1: to all of these tumors are also hoarders, they keep
Speaker 1: particles in so once these nanoparticles uh you know, attached
Speaker 1: to the surface of the blood vessels and then get
Speaker 1: into the tumor, they don't get pushed out. And I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit shady on the exact science of of
Speaker 1: the next part, because again I'm not a scientist, but
Speaker 1: it sounds like these nanoparticles take advantage of a really
Speaker 1: specific like cell membrane protein transfer process to get the
Speaker 1: m lighten into the cancer cells and then destroy them
Speaker 1: from the inside out. So that's pretty super uh. And
Speaker 1: the same process basically might be able to kill the
Speaker 1: human immuno deficiency virus wo HIV. Yeah, let's heart that
Speaker 1: all right. So another study done at Washington University in St.
Speaker 1: Louis published in applied m lighten to to this other task.
Speaker 1: The researchers noted that m lighten can destroy the skin
Speaker 1: or the coding that protects an HIV virus. And I
Speaker 1: know he's just said virus twice, but yes, so I
Speaker 1: mean m lighten destroys lots of cells and to keep
Speaker 1: the other cells around these virus is safe, the researchers
Speaker 1: load the m lighten into those little nanoparticle structures, which
Speaker 1: also happened in a into the stuff that I said
Speaker 1: earlier with the cancer. They also happened to create little
Speaker 1: like bumpers around uh the mu lightened particle. So your
Speaker 1: blood cells are huge and they bounce off the bumpers,
Speaker 1: but anything as small as a virus will slip right
Speaker 1: through the bumpers and come into contact with the MU
Speaker 1: lighten and totally die. Wow. So they sound like big
Speaker 1: claims about bevinom so I'm sure we would have heard
Speaker 1: more about them if the if the research was really
Speaker 1: far along, right. Uh yeah, okay, So so they're they're
Speaker 1: really hoping and when they put out press releases about
Speaker 1: this research being published. Um, they said that, you know,
Speaker 1: with further testing, they might be able to do fabulous
Speaker 1: things like develop a gel that can be applied vaginally
Speaker 1: that will reduce HIV transmission, or that uh into into
Speaker 1: something that could even be injected into the blood stream
Speaker 1: of infected patients to reduce that infection in the body.
Speaker 1: And and those are big hopes. But there you know,
Speaker 1: they haven't been tested out yet. This is all ill
Speaker 1: uh in in vitro I believe being done in laboratories,
Speaker 1: in glass dishes, uh, not in live animals, and so
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of testing to be done. I
Speaker 1: if you've seen headlines about this and someone was going like, yes,
Speaker 1: it is the cure for HIV, uh, that's just the
Speaker 1: media doing what the media does with medical news and
Speaker 1: overstating things dramatically. It's easy to get excited about promising
Speaker 1: preliminary research. Yeah, we do it here sometimes of course,
Speaker 1: it's when somebody says, hey, we could cure something, especially
Speaker 1: if we could cure it in a really bizarre and
Speaker 1: interesting way that includes b venom Yeah, and nanobees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We're like, yeah, we're on nanobe's lead us into the future. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope the nanobees and all these other things do
Speaker 1: turn out. But this isn't even be half of it.
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of claims out there, some more
Speaker 1: well substantiated than others, that various venoms cure or at
Speaker 1: least provide partial relief from a wide range of ailment.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things where I think there
Speaker 1: there's a ton left that we could find out. Venoms
Speaker 1: are are an interesting source of medicine because we already
Speaker 1: know that their potent at doing things. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not like, hey, let's try a capsule made from the
Speaker 1: bark of some random tree and see does it do anything?
Speaker 1: Uh No, I mean yeah, it's not like you have
Speaker 1: to boil a venom down to I mean I mean
Speaker 1: usually just very tiny particles within them, very small proteins
Speaker 1: and peptides and stuff. Are so efficient. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: they do a job within bodies already. Usually it's a
Speaker 1: job that you don't want done to your body, but
Speaker 1: it might be something that actually saves your life. So
Speaker 1: I think this has been a lot of fun to
Speaker 1: talk about. So maybe in the future we will revisit
Speaker 1: the topic of venom and bring even more research into
Speaker 1: developing venom tech and venom medicine. Yeah, yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that we didn't quite get a
Speaker 1: chance to cover today. So if there's anything that you
Speaker 1: can think of that we have not discussed about venom,
Speaker 1: then you should get in touch with us. The ways
Speaker 1: that you can do that are via email at FW
Speaker 1: Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. You can go
Speaker 1: to our website FW thinking dot com to yea to
Speaker 1: check stuff out look around, I mean, if you're into websites.
Speaker 1: If you're not into websites, if you're into social media,
Speaker 1: then you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus,
Speaker 1: where in our screen names are variations of f W thinking.
Speaker 1: You guys, are you're you're smart, You'll you'll find us
Speaker 1: um and yeah, let's let us know. Let us know
Speaker 1: what you thought about this episode, what you think about venom,
Speaker 1: what other topics you would like us to discuss, because
Speaker 1: we really love getting all of your incredible ideas and
Speaker 1: turning them into really good podcasts. So do that, uh,
Speaker 1: And whether or not we hear from you, you will
Speaker 1: hear from us again very soon. For more on this
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