Processing venom into medicine

The venom of snakes, bees, scorpions, and toads can take human lives. However, science has learned how to use these poisons to cure some serious diseases.

More and more toxins are being used as precursors to develop life-saving drugs.

Snake venom

Snake venom poisons its victims by causing neurosis, especially in the organs that control breathing and circulation, leading to muscle contractions, vomiting, convulsions and paralysis. It affects the blood or blood vessels, destroying blood cells, causing hemorrhage or blood clotting, causing the victim to die from embolism. In addition, snake venom attacks and destroys muscle tissue, causing necrosis and infection.

However, medicine has used snake venom to create antivenom serums to treat people bitten by snakes. About 400 species of snakes have venom and serums made from each species can only cure people bitten by that species of snake. Currently, nearly 100 countries have created about 200 types of serums. Vietnam has successfully created antivenom serums for cobras, bamboo vipers, king cobras and kraits.

Snake venom is also used to make pain relievers and anti-inflammatory drugs for rheumatism, muscle pain, nerve pain... in the form of injections or ointments.

Brazilian cobra venom contains captopril, which rapidly lowers blood pressure, causing prey to become weak and paralyzed. Scientists have imitated and created this substance to treat high blood pressure.

The blood-clotting venom is used to make hemostatic drugs and prevent internal bleeding.

From the venom of the king cobra, scientists have extracted a substance called contortrastin, which has the ability to control cancer cells and slow the spread of tumors. Professor Manjunatha Kini from the National University of Singapore said that painkillers made from king cobra venom are 20-200 times more effective than morphine.

Painkiller from pufferfish venom

Experienced chefs know how to remove the part of the puffer fish that contains the deadly poison tetrodotoxin, which disrupts the nervous system and paralyzes the respiratory system and heart rate.

Medical scientists have used this venom to create a chronic painkiller, often used in chemotherapy. Researchers from the John Theurer Cancer Center have found that the painkiller is 3,000 times more effective than morphine, but it has no side effects.

Anticoagulant from tick venom

Tick ​​venom is an excellent precursor to anticoagulants. Scientists are developing a drug that is 70 times more potent than the natural blood-clotting substances found in the human body.

Vascular control drug from frog venom

The drug could also be used to treat cancer, diabetes caused by uncontrolled blood vessels, retinal damage and rheumatoid arthritis. However, the mass extinction of frog species is threatening the supply of precursors to make these drugs.

Fast-Healing Medicine from the Venom of the Bell Toad

This toad secretes sweat that contains toxins. Some of the proteins in their sweat can be used to heal wounds. The peptides in the protein help promote blood vessel growth and it reduces the growth of scar tissue by speeding up the healing process.

Scorpion venom

Snake venom is expensive, but scorpion venom is even more expensive. To get 1 gram of venom, it must be taken from 8,000 scorpions (each scorpion can only be taken once). Scorpion venom contains katsutoxin (also known as butothoxin). Scorpion venom is similar to snake venom in its toxicity to the nervous system. Scorpion venom causes severe pain in the victim, accompanied by vomiting, high blood pressure, convulsions, and coma. Some types block nerve impulses from the brain to the muscles and other organs, causing paralysis; others cause muscle spasms, leading to death.

A new drug refined from the venom of the blue scorpion found in western Cuba could be used to treat liver, breast, brain, prostate and lung cancers.

Bee venom

Beekeepers usually do not suffer from arthritis because in the process of contact with bees, they cannot avoid being stung a few times. From this fact, scientists have researched and discovered that bee venom has the ability to cure arthritis. They have created a drug containing mellitine, which has anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving effects many times stronger than hydrocortisone, used in arthritis. Melltine is also used in orthopedic and cosmetic surgery to make cells smoother when they become scars.

Scientists are hoping to create a vaccine from bee venom against allergies - a disease that has increased rapidly in the past 20 years.

Vaccine made from spider venom

The spider's neurotoxin causes difficulty breathing, pain, rapid heartbeat, and can be fatal. The Latrodectus spider's neurotoxin is 15 times more potent than rattlesnake venom.

From the venom of a spider in Chile, American scientists have created a substance called Gs. Mtx-4 to help regulate the heartbeat of experimental animals in order to create a drug to treat heart fibrillation.

The brown recluse spider and brown recluse spider are venomous members of the Loxosceles family, found in North and South America, Africa, Australia, and parts of Europe. They are considered the largest spiders in the world. Their bites are almost painless, but their venom can leave extensive ulcers and necrotic skin lesions that can be fatal. They are the only spiders in the world that cause skin death in this way. In rare cases, if the bite is not detected and treated promptly, the victim will die from organ failure.

To detoxify, people must inject a vaccine made from the venom of poisonous spiders. The production process is to squeeze the venom from thousands of brown spiders, then inject it into the horse's body. After that, the horse's body will produce anti-venom antibodies - this is the lifebuoy for humans. However, besides producing anti-venom antibodies, the horse's body also produces other substances that poison the body, causing the horse's life expectancy to be shortened from 20 years to 3-4 years.

To overcome the shortcomings of the spider venom vaccine process, scientists have created synthetic venom - the future of therapeutic vaccines. This is a breakthrough in venom technology that promises to significantly reduce the industry's dependence on animal anti-venom.

By creating an artificial copy of the active venom component, it means that the spiders would be redundant in the process and the horses would still be needed, but the artificial venom would be completely harmless to them, the horses would still produce anti-venom in their blood but without the toxic side effects of injecting the real venom as is currently the case.

This potential vaccine is considered a remarkable breakthrough for science but more time is needed to study its feasibility.

According to Zing