Word: venom
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...better place to start than the business end of a good poisonous plant or animal. Modern medicine is filled with drugs derived from deadly poisons, from the muscle relaxant curare (taken from South American vines that are used to poison arrow tips) to the anticoagulant Aggrastat (based on the venom of the saw-scaled viper...
...Thailand cobra, which can grow to more than 6 ft., is armed with venom that paralyzes nerves and muscles and eventually causes respiratory arrest. For the past 10 years, PhyloMed Corp., of Plantation, Fla., and the Bahamian firm Coral Pharmaceuticals have been conducting clinical trials of Immunokine, a drug derived from Thailand cobra venom, on people with multiple sclerosis. Virtually nontoxic, Immunokine seems to prevent immune cells from attacking and destroying the myelin sheath that protects nerve cells...
Scientists have long known that venom from the southern copperhead, native to the Eastern U.S. and Mexico, contains a powerful clot buster. In the mid-1990s, a team led by biochemist Francis Markland, of the University of Southern California, discovered that the venom may also fight cancer...
...venom contains a protein, contortrostatin, that retards the growth and metastasis of tumors. Markland's team has found that injections of contortrostatin not only prevent the spread of ovarian and breast tumors in mice but also shrink them as much as 75%. The group hopes to start clinical trials of contortrostatin in about two years...
...Chuck wasn't very happy with the work or the management turnover at American Cyanamid, and last year he returned full time to his true calling--"to make venom widely available for research." To better carry out this mission, he has branched out geographically, developing new supplies of venom from as far away as China and Kazakhstan. Spiders are everywhere, he says, and you never know which one will lead to a scientific or medical breakthrough...