The toxins in spider venom could cure pain, disease

Sure, spider venom can kill humans. But, if you know what you're doing, it can offer revolutionary cures and treatments for some of humanity's worst ailments. It's already curing impotence...and now help with heart failure, high blood pressure, and epilepsy.

It all comes down to what's known as ion channels, which govern the movement of ions across the membranes of our cells. One sort in particular, the T-type calcium channels, is linked to several serious human conditions, including congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, epilepsy, and chronic pain. And, as it turns out, the venom of the American funnel web spider has toxins that act on these T-type channels.

Researcher Xiao Zhang is optimistic that the toxins in the venom can provide new blocking mechanisms to impede and control these channels, offering an indirect way to shut down the channels that help cause these diseases without any of the nasty side effects of the spider venom itself. As he explains:

"The blocking mechanism of the [spider] toxin is different from classical pore blocker toxins. If we can develop a calcium-channel blocker based on this toxin, we could have a new way to identify how these channels work and develop drugs for treating pain and disease."

Source: io9 Via the Biophysical Society.

Spider venom could be the cure for human impotence

The venom of the Brazilian wandering spider has some seriously nasty effects, causing victims to lose control of their muscles, slowly lose the ability to breathe...and, if the victim is male, get an erection that lasts longer than four hours.

That last part interested medical researcher Kenia Nunes, who saw the potential for the spider's venom as a possible treatment for sexual dysfunction in both men and women. She isolated the active ingredient in the venom that causes this painful condition, which is known as priapism. The ingredient, she discovered, was a peptide called PnTx2-6. When she injected it into a bunch of impotent lab rats, they soon returned to normal, healthy sexual function.

Intriguingly, the spider's venom operates on completely different pathways than those utilized by drugs like Viagra. If the venom's active ingredient can be made safe for human use, then it might well be a huge help for people unaffected by standard erectile dysfunction treatments. And it might not be just men who benefit - Nunes believes PnTx2-6 can help women with sexual dysfunction as well, and that will be one of the focuses of her upcoming experiments.

Source: Discoblog