"Clam" lives: How to scientifically imitate nature to provide lasting local anesthesia

Position 1 sodium channel blockers, such as tetrodotoxin and saxitoxin are small molecule drugs with powerful local anesthetic properties

Encapsulating these drugs in a safe delivery system has always been a challenge: because they are extremely soluble in water, they tend to enter the water surrounding the body

Daniel Kohane, MD, director of the Biomaterials and Drug Delivery Laboratory at Boston Children's Hospital and associate director of anesthesiology, intensive care and pain medicine research, said: "Toxicities are dose-limited, and you won't suffer long-lasting nerve blocks

Dr.

The Kohane laboratory has created many slow-release systems, including systems to deliver tetrodotoxin, but this is the first system to hijack a natural design

Get clues from nature

In order to create a sustained-release system, Ji Wanchang, co-first author Dr.

The research team modified P1 and P2 with long-chain hydrophobic molecules

Kohane explained: "When you add a hydrophobic chain, the peptide will form a long fiber with thousands of p1 and p2 dancing around

When this structure is injected near the target nerve, tetrodotoxin slowly releases itself through diffusion and other processes, and binds to the P1 and P2 of the nerve itself

Put the design into practice

Then, the research team tested the tetrodotoxin-carrying nanostructures and injected them near the sciatic nerve of living mice

"By hijacking nature's design, we created a synthetic anesthetic drug receptor as a delivery and release system," Ji said

The team has applied for a patent for their method