The sight of a scorpion moving towards you with its stinger raised can send a chill down the spine of the bravest among us. If you watched Fear Factor, you saw how terrified the contestants were to come face to face with these creatures. While scorpions have been portrayed as the stuff of nightmares, scientists have found that they can be useful in the fight against brain cancer.
The study, which was conducted by City of Hope, a consortium of research centers in different cities around America focused on studying cancer, suggests that scorpion venom can help to guide our T cells to cancer tumors in the brain so that the immune system then attacks and kills them off. It is like painting a target so that a marksman can identify friend from foe.
For their study, the team obtained venom from a species of scorpion called the deathstalker scorpion. This particular variety is native to arid regions in the Middle East and North Africa. They obtained chlorotoxin, a component of this scorpion’s venom, and genetically engineered it to recognize cancer cells, especially glioblastoma (the most deadly brain cancer). This cancer is especially hard to treat because its tumors aren’t localized in one region of the brain; rather, they are usually dispersed throughout one’s brain.
The research team used chlorotoxin as radar pinpointing the locations of the scattered tumors so that T cells can attack them wherever they are found in the brain. The Phase One study had four patients as study subjects. After receiving three sessions of chlorotoxin treatment, three patients were observed to be in a “stable disease state” in which tumors neither shrunk nor grew. This 75% stable state result shows the potential of this approach even if all trial subjects eventually succumbed to the disease.
This isn’t the first time that animal toxins are being used in medicine. In the ancient Roman Empire, snake venom was often used by healers to treat leprosy, small pox, wounds and fever. In some cultures, epileptic patients have been subjected to rattlesnake bites and reports say those seizures stopped. Currently, modern medicine leverages snake venom in the development of antivenom. So, the use of venom in medicine isn’t such a new thing.
The City of Hope team is working to tweak the chlorotoxin dosage and plan bigger studies to test how well their approach works in larger population samples. As they continue their work to boost how the immune system targets GBM tumors, other teams at entities like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) are also working to develop more effective chemotherapy treatment options since the fight against cancer is an all-hands-on-deck battle in which every available weapon has a role to play.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CNSP
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