Threads -  Fugu as a Painkiller

On 1/12/2003, Tamara Kelly posted:

Hahahaha - let's go out and lick some toadfish

---

Poison from Lethal Fish Could Be a Painkiller

Sat Nov 29, 9:12 PM ET  Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Rachelle Younglai



TORONTO (Reuters) - A tiny Canadian company wants to use poison from a fish -- a substance more toxic than cyanide -- to help cancer patients suppress pain or to wean heroin addicts off their habit.

International Wex Technologies, a Vancouver-based company listed on the small-cap Canadian Venture Exchange, says early trials show positive results from tetrodotoxin, although bigger and more extensive tests will be needed before the product reaches the marketing stage.

It says the new drug could be on the market within three years, if all the tests work out.

The new drug is derived from a blowfish poison -- a substance so dangerous that a mere trace can paralyze a person within minutes.

The blowfish is known to gourmets as the source of the sometimes deadly Japanese fugu delicacy, a dish that can be prepared only by trained and licensed chefs, because the slip of a knife can poison the food, causing the diner to drop to the ground convulsing and gasping for air.

It has been described as the culinary version of Russian roulette.

But the drug derived from the poison, tetrodotoxin, has already passed two phases of clinical tests, and doctors conducting early surveys say it eased pain in terminally ill cancer patients, where no other pain medication had worked.

"It quickly became apparent that some patients were having a dramatic response. You would not have expected these results in existing treatments," said Dr Edward Sellers, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Toronto who helped Wex conduct its Phase II trials, a study of 22 patients.

Sellers said one patient in his mid-50s was in such agony that he couldn't even wear his clothes without sharp surges of pain.

But with shots of Tectin, Wex's patented name for tetrodotoxin, his pain subsided for more than week.

Researchers injected patients with several micrograms of Tectin – a quantity so small it can't be seen with the naked eye -- twice a day for four days, and found that nearly 70 percent experienced a reduction in pain.

Pain relief began around the third day of treatment, and often lasted after the final injection. In some cases, the relief extended beyond 15 days, the study showed.

Tectin, a sodium channel blocker, stops nerves from sending pain signals to the brain.

The company says Tectin differs from other painkillers in that it doesn't have the same side effects as morphine and its derivatives, doesn't interact with other medicines and is not addictive. It is up to 3,200 times stronger than morphine.

The success of the early Tectin tests is a small coup for a company that has set its sights on the $38 billion North American painkiller market,some 10 percent of which comes from managing cancer pain.

Wex says that each puffer fish can provide about 600 doses of the drug from within its liver, kidneys and reproductive organs, so there is no shortage of the toxin.

POISON AS PAINKILLER

It wasn't always about pain for Wex.

Wex's founder, Hay Kong Shum, a medical technician who was educated in Russia and China, originally hoped Tectin would help ease withdrawal symptoms.  But preliminary studies found the poison had painkilling properties and the company, facing limited resources, decided to take a shortcut to profitability. It put the heroin therapy on the back burner and turned to the painkiller industry.

"It was the easiest way for us to get to market," said Donna Shum, Hay , Kong's daughter and Wex's chief operating officer.

Wex's interim test results have caused some murmurings among health-care workers who wonder about the potential of this painkiller.

But researchers and analysts are not yet touting Tectin as a drug to rival morphine. Wex still has to take its drug through crucial phase III trials, where it ramps up its test numbers to at least 400 patients.

The drug also faces an image problem.

"Because it's associated with death, it got a bad rap," said Sellers.

And although the scientific community may acknowledge the properties and benefits of the compound, it is less accepting of a drug derived from nature. "There is a resistance from the medical community to accept treatments from the natural world," said Rob Peets, an analyst with Golden Capital Securities. "If this was a chemical product it would have been snapped up a long time ago."

Wex's stock has jumped about 150 percent since August.

Charles deG replied:

The problem here is you would die,before any pain was killed.

At 17:40 1/12/03 +1000, Paul wrote:

>I wonder what tests of the blue-ringed octopus venom could reveal?
>This venom paralyses its victims. I wonder what extremely tiny doses
>could do?

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a highly efficient killer, and strangely distributed among living things. A number of fish store TTX and related analogues in their tissues, but it turns up also in the blue-ringed octopus, seastars, crabs, marine snails and molluscs, flatworms, ribbonworms and even marine algae. On land, some frogs, newts and salamanders, carry the same venom as
well.

It goes against all probability that such a diverse group of animals (and even algae) could have evolved the same poison. What is far more likely is that some smaller organism, down at the bottom of the food chain, makes the toxin which others collect. As proof of this, puffer fish grown in culture do not contain TTX until they are given tissue from a TTX-producing fish to eat, presumably passing on some of the microbes which actually make the TTX.

So yes, a healing dish of stir-fried blue-ringed occy could be on the menu one day.  But look into the links betweem TTX and zombies . . .

>I cannot think of other venoms which would not be painful offhand (and
>must admit I do not know if there is local pain involved with blue
>ringed octopus bites).

Off-hand, the only painless poison I can think of is the hemlock that Socrates took.  Not water hemlock, the other one.

>>Any thoughts?

SManson suggested:

Perhaps you should look at homeopathy?

Peter Macinnis replied:

At 18:18 1/12/03 +1030, somebody unpronounceable except maybe in Serbian wrote:

>Perhaps you should look at homeopathy?

Great idea -- feed toadfish to the homeopaths!

Thanks for that inspiring thought . . . or did you mean feed the homeopaths to the toadfish?  That seems a little harsh . . .

Peter Macinnis replied:

So in answer to your question, the edited ms is due back any day now, and it should go through several cycles before heading to the printer in March.  I plan to turn 60 in Paris or on Cyprus in April, so release will be May, most probably.

Printing is the quick bit -- design, getting the words right (I noticed a reference to "gastric lavage" in the text last night -- that
has to go if my editor hasn't killed it), getting the pics, stuff like that is what takes the time.

Now while we are talking about me, let's not: let's turn to something serious.  Bloody serious.

For those who don't know me, I am a scrivener and word herder by trade, but because I write about science, I have largely ignored the stuff that is going on in the Arts Industry about free trade and the effects it will have.  It didn't apply to the likes of me, I thought. Wrong: even science writers are affected.

If people have been following the free trade bullshit (this is the finely-orchestrated Armageddon where the Tory Party ensures a level playing field by making it vertical and instead of moving the goalposts, sells them off for woodchips), I have been told of an interesting gotcha with my history of rockets. Several US publishers "quite liked it", but because my story starts with me on my way to Woomera for the launch of a Scramjet last year, they feel it will not sell enough copies to Mercans.  It is overtly foreign, and so will not appeal to the US market.  And this in a book which has a chapter on the use of rockets in the war of 1814, and involved me in research in Washington DC, Massachusetts, Maryland and California!

Perhaps you remember the old line "Yes, but what have you done for me lately?"

The US distributors who took my last book are willing to carry this one, so it will get out in the USA, but bleedin eck, if a bit of introductory atmospherics set in a place where the natives are friendly but just a bit exotic is enough to put the Seppos off from allowing a book largely about the USA to have a separate imprint, can you imagine what would happen if the Yarts generally have to compete in an environment set according to the cultural standards of fat men with no necks and perfect teeth at both ends in Hollywood?  "Don't mention the war" has nothing on this sort of cultural insularity and self-centredness.

We MUST resist any attempt to sell off our cultural heritage for the alleged benefit of the wheat cockies, or we won't be allowed to call them that any more.  Our Rugby-tragic PM would not sell off "footie", but he will do the dirty on all the latte-swilling writers and film-makers and creative people, possibly because they are not lining up like the sweaty boofheads of field, track, oval and pool to be photographed with You Know Who.

If I believed closer contact would add to the ferment, well and good: Hollywood today would be a far poorer place without the Oz contingent. If cultural closeness benefited both sides, it would be excellent, but I see now that we will merely be blended, blinded and blanded.  I want to be the spice in a stir-fry, not the trace of tofu in a mess of pottage that some mindless vote-hunter can then trade off, along with my birthright.

Gary-Peter Dalrymple added :


This is wishful thinking

Snake bites to humans are seldom fatal in themselves, as the poor little serpent isn't designed to eat people and when disturbed by humans they are seldom in a fit state to deliver a 'full load' of venom in any case.   The shock and terror of presumed death from a snake bite is enough to send you into a highly stressful state that can magnify the effect, though.

I have read (in fictional sources including Sherlock Holmes, 'The Scarlet Band'? ) that Cobra Venom is said to be halucinogenic

It's not the Temple that saves you, some White Trash Evangelical Baptist cults in the US feature snake handling and 'protected by faith' (bible text reference escapes me for the moment) they are 'immune' to harm as they dance with handfuls of rattlesnakes etc. (not quite true as fatalities do occur and the frequently bitten often suffer multiple arthritis like deformities).  

Ruby Wax did a special on these people some years back.

Bitten time and again, survivors of these congregations come back for more; who can say if it is the rattler venom of the ecstatic dancing or sermonising that brings them back.

However to be fair to your temple folk, the production of a snake's venom is a significant biological investment for the animal, with experiance the snake could decide that carrying a full potency venom load was unneccessary if feeding at the temple was routine.

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Tamara Kelly"
>Subject: fugu as a painkiller

>I thought it was only canetoads that were licked by you Queenslanders?

>Seriously, it sounds very promising.
>Anything which can alleviate pain in the terminally ill is to be
>welcomed.
>
>I wonder what tests of the blue-ringed octopus venom could reveal?
>This venom paralyses it's victims. I wonder what extremely tiny doses
>could do?

>I cannot think of other venoms which would not be painful offhand (and
>must admit I do not know if there is local pain involved with blue
>ringed octopus bites).

Tamara replied:

I just love the irony of it all.  Now that they have related the fugu poison effects as being a better pain killer than morphine, people will make the assumption they will be able to get high on it at well. I KNOW there'll be someone out there who will try to boil down a toadfish, thinking they can get the dosage right.

People were warned that Gold Top Mushies were hallucenogenic but...
http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/magic_mushrooms_aunz/magic_mushrooms_aunz.shtml

And on the topic of toadlicking?
http://www.urbanlegends.com/animals/toad_licking.html

Kristie West added:

Am I the only Simpsons nerd who's watching this thread while recollecting the episode where Homer orders Fugu at a sushi restaurant? The master chef is in the back of the car with his girlfriend, so the apprentice takes the full fish and stands there with the guide saying "Poison fish, poison fish, Tasty Fish!", the tasty fish being a sliver about 2 mm wide.

<snip very interesting research>

> There is a serious local industry investigating venoms as a source of new
> drugs of various sorts. One of the most successful drug classes used to
> treat high blood pressure (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme inhibitors) was
> developed from a snake venom.
>

Ray added:

>>There was also a snippet I read somewhere on the incredible variety of
antibiotic activity in soils rich in organic matter.

That Paul, is the source of most of (if not all) the ....mycin antibiotics and penicillin.  A fungus needs defence against all manner of bacteria in the soil, and they've been practicing the art for a billion years.

>I guess that the questions are:
>Are there many promising new classes of antibiotics in the 'pipeline'?
>If there are, could they be 'fast-tracked' into production when - as
>seems possible in the near future - millions become infected with
>bacterial pathogens which are resistant to all classes of antibiotics?

>If there are no promising new classes of antibiotics in the 'pipeline',
>is it true that we may be in deep trouble?

Ray asked

What is the name of that antibiotic (begins with "F"..?) extracted from a red species of seaweed within the last couple of years in Australia?

There are also, I remember hearing, a range of enzymes produced by fly maggots which have antibacterial effect.

Anything which by nature of habitat, requires defence against microscopic predators (IMO) probably has potential as a source for antibiotic and bactericidal compounds.