Several decades ago the fastest path to medical advance was claimed to be theoretical science. That approach has not paid off as richly as predicted.
But it may still. (When Pets.com failed, some said we should have known you cannot make money selling pet supplies online. But now Chewy.com succeeds.) Nonetheless the contempt the theoreticians heaped upon empirical trial-and-error research was not justified. Much is still left to be learned by that method, as exemplified in the passages quoted below.
(p. D1) Efforts to tease apart the vast swarm of proteins in venom — a field called venomics — have burgeoned in recent years, and the growing catalog of compounds has led to a number of drug discoveries. As the components of these natural toxins continue to be assayed by evolving technologies, the number of promising molecules is also growing.
“A century ago we thought venom had three or four components, and now we know just one type of venom can have thousands,” said Leslie V. Boyer, a professor emeritus of pathology at the University of Arizona. “Things are accelerating because a small number of very good laboratories have been pumping out information that everyone else can now use to make discoveries.”
She added, “There’s a pharmacopoeia out there waiting to be explored.”
. . .
(p. D8) The techniques used to process venom compounds have become so powerful that they are creating new opportunities. “We can do assays nowadays using only a couple of micrograms of venom that 10 or 15 years ago would have required hundreds of micrograms,” or more, Dr. Fry said. “What this has done is open up all the other venomous lineages out there that produce tiny amounts of material.”
There is an enormous natural library to sort through. Hundreds of thousands of species of reptile, insect, spider, snail and jellyfish, among other creatures, have mastered the art of chemical warfare with venom. Moreover, the makeup of venom varies from animal to animal. There is a kind of toxic terroir: Venom differs in quantity, potency and proportion and types of toxin, according to habitat and diet, and even by changing temperatures due to climate change.
Venom is made of a complex mix of toxins, which are composed of proteins with unique characteristics. They are so deadly because evolution has honed their effectiveness for so long — some 54 million years for snakes and 600 million for jellyfish.
. . .
Numerous venom-derived drugs are on the market. Captopril, the first, was created in the 1970s from the venom of a Brazilian jararaca pit viper to treat high blood pressure. It has been successful commercially. Another drug, exenatide, is derived from Gila monster venom and is prescribed for Type 2 diabetes. Draculin is an anticoagulant from vampire bat venom and is used to treat stroke and heart attack.
The venom of the Israeli deathstalker scorpion is the source of a compound in clinical trials that finds and illuminates breast and colon tumors.
Some proteins have been flagged as potential candidates for new drugs, but they have to journey through the long process of manufacture and clinical trials, which can take many years and cost millions of dollars. In March [2022], researchers at the University of Utah announced that they had discovered a fast-acting molecule in cone snails. Cone snails fire their venom into fish, which causes the victims’ glucose levels to drop so rapidly it kills them. It holds promise as a drug for diabetes. Bee venom appears to work with a wide range of pathologies and has recently been found to kill aggressive breast cancer cells.
For the full story see:
(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 6, 2022 [sic], and has the title “Deadly Venom From Spiders and Snakes May Also Cure What Ails You.”)
The published academic article on the use of cone snail venom to derive a new insulin for diabetes is:
The published academic article on the use of honeybee venom against breast cancer is:
A recent book persuasively argued for the medical promise of drugs derived from “poison”:
Whiteman, Noah. Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins―from Spices to Vices. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2023.