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08-09-2016, 10:01 PM
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Spiders and scorpions join fight against superbugs *
A British lab is searching for new medicines in the poiso**us secretions of some of the world's deadliest creatures, addressing the increasingly desperate challenge of finding viable new *****.
Over-prescription and over-use in farming of antibiotics has given rise to so-called 'superbugs', multi-drug resistant infections that can evade even the medicines designed to kill them. Experts have warned since the 1990s that lethal superbugs were on the horizon, but few drugmakers have attempted to develop ***** against them. Ve**mtech, based in south-east England, believe help could be found in the unlikeliest of sources; the ve**m of spiders, scorpions and snakes that is often fatal to humans. Millions of years of evolution has given these creature's ve**m the ability to target and attack their prey while avoiding the body's defenses. Ve**mtech scientists hope that an injected drug could perform the same function. When broken down at the molecular level a tiny droplet of ve**m contains hundreds of individual components that could eventually be made into new *****, explained Ve**mtech founder Steven Trim. "The principle of Ve**mtech is separating ve**ms out into their component parts and targeting them to the right disease area," Trim told Reuters. He added that his drug discovery team was "putting the right ve**m for the right drug target so we maximize the hits - and a hit is an interesting peptide that might make it to a drug." Around 400 animals are kept at his lab in Kent, including about 70 species of tarantula and 30 species of scorpion. Many of these kill their prey with ve**ms that contain hundreds of protein molecules, some of which block nerve activity. Ve**mtech keep a number of invertebrates which can be deadly to humans, namely the black widow spider and deathstalker scorpion. Trim, who worked for pharmaceutical company Pfizer before founding Ve**mtech, stressed that the ve**m extraction process causes ** discernible harm to the creatures. "We anesthetize the invertebrates, just to temporarily put them to sleep, it makes it safer for us because if they're immobile they can't bite us. But also it's better for the animals as well. And using a very tiny electrical stimulation, just to contract the muscle and squeeze the gland we get a small amount of ve**m produced," he said. The ve**m extracted from each creature can be measured in micro-liters; a thousandth of a milliliter. Nevertheless, this tiny volume holds hundreds of useful molecules. "The average scorpion will only produce 2 or 3 micro-liters. So it's a really small amount. But in that small amount there's a lot of interesting peptides; several hundred different components and several micro-grams of protein in there, so there's plenty for us to work with," Trim said. "We separate that out in a two phase process called high pressure liquid chromatography. And that gives us typically about a hundred fractions per ve**m, and each one of those fractions may contain 1 to 5 individual peptides. And it's those individual peptides and proteins that are the real interesting things; these are the molecules that convey the biological activity of the ve**m." Working with scientists from nearby Canterbury Christ Church University, they've been screening their ve**m-derived 'chemical library' against different diseases. Trim said they've had some extremely encouraging results. "Some of them we found can kill bacteria, bacteria like E.Coli and Staphylococcus, so very relevant at the moment where modern medicines are failing. And we're also finding ve**ms that are modifying and killing cancer cells," he said, adding that Ve**mtech is **w working with pharmaceutical companies to turn their ve**m discoveries into the next generation of *****. أكثر... ??????? ??????: Spiders and scorpions join fight against superbugs * || ??????: ahlam1399 || ??????: اسم منتداك
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