Skip to main content

You may soon be able to shell out for snail-based pain medicine

snail venom pain relief 3 conus regius
Image used with permission by copyright holder
When it comes to treating chronic pain, your first thought may not be that the answer could reside in the venom of a tiny, red-shelled marine snail that feeds on a specific type of marine “fireworm.”

That’s possibly where you should have been looking, however, based on a new article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The paper describes a compound which blocks pain, discovered by scientists at the University of Utah, with support from researchers at the University of Florence, Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, A. T. Still University, University of Mississippi Medical Center, and biotech company Kineta.

Not only was the impact of the compound long-lasting, with its effects continuing for 72 hours after being injected into rodents, but it was also free of highly-addictive opioids, which kill 91 Americans every single day from drug overdoses.

The compound is derived from petide, a chemical component found in the venom of the particular snail in question, which uses it both to help immobilize prey and also as a defense mechanism.

“There are hundreds of species of snail, which hunt a wide variety of prey, such as fish, worms, and other snails,” Dr. J. Michael McIntosh, a professor of psychiatry and biology at the University of Utah, told Digital Trends. “They each have a unique cocktail of 200 or so components in their venom. Once we find a particular compound of interest, we can then begin surveying the other species of snails to see if we can find improved versions of that compound. As we did our tests, we found petide in the venom of the conus regis snail.”

The original petide worked well in rodent tests, although the team made further synthetic modifications to the compound based on differences in the receptors of humans. Now, they’re working to develop the compounds for clinical trials in humans. “It’s in pre-clinical stages at the moment,” McIntosh said. “We hope to advance that over the next year or two, so as to do drug testing in humans.”

Editors' Recommendations

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Read more