Word: venoms
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...websites like sgboy.com and numerous online forums they can interact with like-minded surfers. You can leave personal ads, rent an apartment, or find fellow gay schoolmates at sgboy.com's many forums. The site's popularity was underscored earlier this month, when it held a beauty contest at Venom, one of Singapore's largest discos: hundreds of men signed up to strut the catwalk and thousands more queued up on the street outside for a chance to ogle at them...
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...
...scientists have since isolated at least 10 microbe-fighting myotoxins from various viper venoms and synthesized nontoxic versions of them in the lab. They are talking to drug companies about doing additional research in animals and, eventually, people. If those studies pan out, Moreno says, viper-venom antibiotics could be put in everything from mouthwashes to contact lenses to fight salmonella, cholera, staph and strep...
Chlorotoxin, a substance in the venom of the giant Israeli scorpion, a 5-in.-long species known as the "death stalker," may offer hope for the 25,000 Americans each year who have glioma, an incurable, rapidly spreading form of brain cancer. Surgery provides only a temporary respite, and the few experimental therapies extend a patient's life span only weeks...