Word: venomously
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
Each species of cone snail produces a unique venom that contains between 50 and 200 pharmacologically active peptides known as conotoxins. The most advanced conotoxin-derived drug in development is Elan Corp.'s Ziconotide, a nonaddictive treatment for severe chronic pain that is awaiting FDA approval. Cognetix, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, recently started clinical trials on a possible epilepsy treatment. Also in the works: potential therapies for schizophrenia, stroke and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases...
...viper venoms--particularly those from the genus Bothrops, of which the Central American terciopelo snake is a member--contain compounds that closely resemble substances used by white blood cells to fend off bacterial infections. Some of these substances work by damaging or disrupting lipids within the bacterial cell wall. A decade ago, microbiologists Edgardo Moreno, of Costa Rica's National University, and Bruno Lomonte, of the University of Costa Rica, realized that a muscle-destroying toxin in terciopelo venom behaved the same...