Anti poison is medicine! Tetrodotoxin may become a new generation of accurate local anesthetics

However, we have to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholderThis deadly tetrodotoxin is "rare" in the eyes of medical researchers! I'm not afraid to tell you that the reason for the powder is that this deadly toxin has the magical ability to fight against pain! < br / > < br / > recently, researchers from Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School updated their latest research on this magical ability in the journal Nature communicationsThey found that tetrodotoxin contains a small amount of sustained-release agents, which can effectively inhibit the transmission of pain information channels, and has clinical and scientific significance for the development of local anestheticsAt the same time, this kind of inhibition is not only safe and targeted, but also durable, with few side effects, which can effectively avoid the current clinical opioid deficiency< br / > the conjecture of "antitoxicity as medicine" < br / > tetrodotoxin (TTX), a natural sodium channel blocker (s1scb), blocks information transmission by blocking the pathways on the cell membraneIt is this particularity that makes the puffer fish deadly! Once you ingest the toxic meat, you will be able to cause diaphragmatic paralysis in the release of super long-lasting toxin, until suffocation and death< br / > but it's amazing that this "toxicity" is in theory the "best choice" for pain inhibitors! < br / > DrDaniel Kohane image source: Boston Children's hospital < br / > so DrDaniel Kohane, director of biomaterials and drug delivery Laboratory of Boston Children's Hospital, based on his years of research on neurotoxins, thought: if we try to accurately put tetrodotoxin into the damaged tissue and control its rate of blocking sodium channel, we may be able to "anti poison as medicine", Give full play to its new advantages in pain relief< br / > he was also surprised to find that "unlike artificial drugs, this natural sodium channel blocker does not seem to cause seizures or arrhythmias, and does not have too much local tissue toxicity, which will be a new idea to break through the traditional local anesthetics." < br / > local "poison control" has become the key to the test! DrKohane and DrChao Zhao and DrAndong Liu, who are also interested in tetrodotoxin, immediately organized a team to test this conjecture< br / > < br / > researchers have tried a variety of methods to test the conjectureHowever, it is frustrating that the toxicity test is failingThis made DrKohane realize that how to reduce its toxicity has become a huge challenge At the same time, the researchers also found that if we want to control its toxicity, we need to not only control the drug loading of TTX, but also control its penetration rate < br / > therefore, based on this fact, the researchers improved the experimental method Based on the knowledge that the release rate of TTX is regulated by the hydrophilicity of the polymer, they chose to combine TTX with the polymer "skeleton" of trialcoholic dicarboxylic acid and glycol to form a strong "enhanced Permeation" chemical bond Then, it was injected into the sciatic nerve of rats to play the role of natural hydrolysis through the ester bond in the body, dissolve the chemical bond, and then control the release rate of the toxin Finally, the toxin was put into the target tissue safely and accurately "The use of enhancers can make ineffective drug concentrations effective, but not increase systemic toxicity," explains Dr Kohane < br / > pain relief drugs without side effects < br / > in the course of the experiment, the researchers were also surprised to find that 80 μ g TTX could play a role in nerve block for up to three days This is the welfare that clinical trials dream of! Dr Kohane excitedly said: "what we have shown is that we can get a series of different nerve blocks by controlling the dose or release rate, which is suitable for different clinical trials For example, doctors can use it to anesthetize patients so that they don't need to add anesthetics many times to complete an operation People suffering from cancer pain can also use it to suppress pain, and of course, the longer the better "< br / > of course, we have to consider whether this pain reliever will have side effects As we all know, opioids are commonly used pain management drugs Their abuse often leads to a variety of neurological problems and even death In this experiment, the researchers also paid attention to the side effects In the rat models that received multiple doses of injection, there was no death, and even there was no contralateral motor dysfunction in the sciatic nerve Dr Kohane also mentioned this in an interview, saying: "we injected rats with a polymer containing 20 μ g tetrodotoxin, which is enough to kill them more than 10 times, but as a result, they showed no signs of toxicity So these things are really safe "< br / > researchers are hopeful about the results of this study They believe that this will become a new method of precise treatment of local chronic pain It is also believed that this technology is scalable and can be widely used in clinical trials < br / > it's not the lack of beauty in the world, but the lack of eyes to find beauty If you don't have a new solution in the laboratory, please open the door of the laboratory and go to nature It will always tell us a better way to solve our problems < br / > reference materials: < br / > [1] polymer tetrodotoxin junctions to bring along duration local anesthesia with minimal toxicity < br / > [2] potent, lethal pufferfish poison has unexpected role in reliving pain < br / > [3] alternative may be found in lethal pufferfish toxin