biotech
Snail Toxin For Developing Drugs Against Neurological Disorders
Filed in archive Drugs, Vaccines and Therapeutics , Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics by ruth on August 21, 2006
Snail Toxin For Developing Drugs Against Neurological Disorders
Scientists have been able to isolate a "conotoxin", a peptide from the venomous Cone snail Conus omaria (photo) that seems to block the nicotine receptors in the brain. While the obvious application may be as a drug candidate to help patients to quit smoking, its discoverers say the toxin may also have other uses as a tool in developing drugs for other neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, depression, and perhaps even schizophrenia.
McIntosh says the new toxin itself is unlikely to become a drug because it blocks rather than stimulates nicotinic receptors. But because it can act on some types of nicotinic receptors and not others - like a key that opens some locks but not others - it has great potential as a tool for precisely identifying the shape and structure of the receptor "locks," thus making it easier to design new medicines or "keys" to fit those receptors and trigger them to release desired neurotransmitters.

See the full article from the Brain Institute at the University of Utah on how the toxin were isolated from venomous snails collected in the Philippines, and other details of the study.

[Photo: A shell from the venomous cone snail Conus omaria, which lives in the Pacific and Indian oceans and eats other snails. Credit: Kerry Matz]


Permalink: Snail Toxin For Developing Drugs Against Neurological Disorders
Tags: alzheimer  parkinson  biotech  drugs  toxin  developing+drugs  neurological+disorders  snail+toxin 
Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/33897
img Addthis img Ask img Blinklist img del.icio.us img Digg img Fark img Facebook img Google img Lycos img Ma.gnolia Add this page to Mister Wong Mr Wong img Netscape img Netvousz img Newsvine img Reddit img StumbleUpon img Slashdot img Tailrank img Technorati img Wink img Yahoo

Vote for Snail Toxin For Developing Drugs Against Neurological Disorders:

  • Currently 8.00/10
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
Rating: 8.00 out of 3 vote(s) cast.
Subscribe
Share It
RSSrss
See all blog subscribe options
Google google
What is RSS?
Yahoo! yahoo
Addthis Subscribe using any feed reader!
Bloglines Bloglines
Newsletter

TwitterFollow us on Twitter!