Venom Tech

Venom is one of the most fascinating things in the animal kingdom. But what role does it play in contemporary and future medicine?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
that looks at the future and says you're toxic. I'm
slipping under. I'm Joe McCormick, I'm Lauren, and our regular

(00:22):
host Jonathan Strickland is not with us this week. He
is having a wonderful time somewhere other than the office,
which is a good thing to do occasionally, or so
I've heard. But if you've been listening to this podcast
for a while, you probably know Lauren and I sort
of have a tradition that when Jonathan's away, the Scorpions
will play, or or the creepy Crawley's of some kind.

(00:43):
Whenever Jonathan is out, we tried to do a podcast
about bugs, and it's surprisingly fruitful in terms of future technology. Yeah,
who knew. Um, So today we're going to talk about
something that was an idea Lauren had and I think
it actually turned out really cool, the potential for future
technologies and current developing medical technologies based on positive uses

(01:09):
of venom venom animal venom. Yes, Lauren, do you have
a venom story? Have you ever been stung or bitten?
By any kind of creature that put poison under your skin. Uh, No,
that's a boring answer. No good spiderbytes, scorpion stings, anything like. Um,
I mean, I guess I've gotten like a tiny spider
bite once or twice, but I mean, you know, or

(01:31):
like an ant bite. Our ants venomous? Yes, yes, they
are many creatures that inject some kind of poison into
your body are venomous. Wait a minute, now, I think
we're having a little vocabulary mix up because I think
you just said poison, and that's not exactly the same
thing as venom, is it. No, it's not, though in

(01:53):
sort of popular parlance it might be. But let's let's
talk the science talk what does it actually mean? And when,
like a biologist says venom versus poison? Well, I was
curious about this, so I looked it up and there
there's a paper called complex Cocktails, the Evolutionary Novelty of Venoms.
That was it was report in Trends in Ecology and Evolution,

(02:17):
and this gave the following definition of venoms. Specifically, they
said it's a secretion produced in a specialized gland in
one animal and delivered to a target animal through the
infliction of a wound, regardless of how tiny it could be,
which contains molecules that disrupt normal physiological or biochemical processes

(02:38):
so as to facilitate feeding or defense by the producing animal.
That's kind of a mouthful, but it has a lot
of detail there. That's kind of a good MEATIA definition.
So it it includes that it's not a passive distribution
of the chemical. It's produced by the host animal. Uh.
The animal delivers it to another animals somehow through like

(03:01):
a bite. There's some kind of injection and it facilitates
either defense or or predatory behavior. And this sort of
goes in line with a popular definition just for the
common speech level. I looked it up in Mariam Webster.
They said venom was a poison that's produced by an
animals such as a snake, used to kill or injure
another animal through biting or stinging. Uh So, basically, the

(03:25):
difference between a venom and a poison is the delivery
vector of the icky stuff, and venoms are injected by
like specialized usually like hypodermic needle like teeth or stingers,
and poisons are just secreted, uh like in lazy lazy frogs, oh,
the poison dart frogs. Yeah. Yeah, they're the hippies of

(03:46):
the animal kingdom. I'm telling you right right, because they
just wait for you to come up and handle them. Yeah,
and that's how they get you. Yeah. So the easy
rubric I guess is that if you seese up an
die after an animal bites you or stings you, that
animal was venomous. But if you die after you eat

(04:07):
an animal or you catch it and rub it all
over your naked flesh, that animal was probably poisonous. Probably,
Although it's a good rule of thumb to not go
around eating animals if you're not sure that they don't
contain little sacks of really potent neurotoxins I, unless you're
really sure of what you're doing. Um, eating a venomous
snake is really just as bad as eating a poisonous snake.

(04:32):
And there are poisonous snakes. Some snakes are both venomous
and poisonous. Really, like a snake that would be poisonous
to eat or handle? Yeah, bad times, Stay away from
that guy. I always thought that the use of poisonous
snake was just kind of like people using the word wrong.
So different different animals have all kinds of different stuff
going on. How true that is? And in fact, I

(04:52):
came across a really interesting little fact on the side
while I was researching for this episode. So, some poisonous animals,
like the family of poison dart frogs, don't actually make
their own poison, but they acquire it from the environment
they live in. So it's thought that they eat some
kind of poisonous prey and then they appropriate that poison

(05:14):
into the poison that they wear on their skins. So
you rubbed the frog all over you and then you
get sick or die, that's actually because of something that
the frog itself acquired from nature. Okay, so let's do
a few quick Venom facts before we get into the
Venom tech. Joe and I might be really excited about this.
If you cann't tell listeners, well, I just yeah, I

(05:36):
love venom wisdom Venom is that? Does that have something
to do as Spider Man, because I don't feel like
Venom had a lot of going on in the wisdom category.
You are much more the comic book nerd around here.
I think you know more about venom than I do.
As we've established, I'm sort of a fake geek he's
he's he's kind of a raging i'd sort of so, yeah,

(05:58):
okay at any rate? Yeah, no, no no, no, just so
venom facts. Yeah. Yeah. So the obvious question that always
comes up, it's like it's sort of the kids playground argument, right,
what's the most venomous animal in the world. But actually
that's a question that's kind of hard to answer because
you can't measure it by which ones kill the most

(06:18):
animals or humans, because this might be based more on
like which ones were exposed to the most options, number
of bytes, access to healthcare, and anti venom after you
get bittendis lots of these things. And it's not like
a venom has a base level of toxicity that there's
an easy litmus test for. It's it's really just how

(06:38):
does it interact with cells? And and most venoms are
made up of multiple proteins and peptides that have different
effects on different cell structures, right, So one venom might
have a bunch of different toxins in it, right. Um.
The old method for measuring toxicity is called a substances
l D fifty, which is the lethal dose l D
of a substance that will kill of test animals. It's

(07:03):
measured by the weight of the substance needed per one
or one m, depending on how big of a critter
you're talking about of the test animals body weight, so
low numbers are more deadly. For for example, a box
jellyfish's venom has an l D fifty of zero point
zero four. Uh, don't eat their stingers, that would be bad. Um.

(07:26):
A coral snakes LD fifty is one point three um.
And now if this method sounds like a lot of
animals were harmed in the making of this this research,
you're correct, and that's why people don't use it so
much anymore because it involves killing a whole lot of
test animals. Really yeah, bad times. So a lot of

(07:47):
times you'll see animals when when we're setting up these
great venom competitions separated into different animal groups. So some
people say, for example, that the most venomous snake might
be the inland type hand snake of Australia. A lot
of these things hang out in Australia and they really do.
Like these funnel web spiders like those those are just
like these little eight like a Darth vaders that live

(08:10):
on the ground in Australia. I feel bad for If
we have any Australian listeners, please right in tell us
about all the venomous creatures that you find in your
bed at night. Uh but yeah, so the inland type hand. Supposedly,
the amount of venom usually delivered in one bite by
this snake is enough to kill a hundred adult men. Fortunately,

(08:31):
we have ways of treating this. We have an effective
anti venom. By the way, do a quick Google image
search if you're listening on a computer of the inland
type hand. It does this thing where it raises a
coiled section of its upper body up off the ground,
and it looks so intimidating it's almost funny. It looks

(08:53):
like it's some kind of like snake shaped airplane. In
mid take off, it's like winding up into the sky.
In the next frame, it'll be off the ground, all right.
Also another fact, taipan apparently means something like big shot
or tycoon in Chinese. That's beautiful, that's that. And the
spelling of that, if you're trying to look it up,

(09:14):
is t A I P A N. So go go
check that out. Um. But uh yeah, other other creatures,
I mean, you know, a lot. Lots of things are
venomous that you probably already know about, but some really
interesting ones. We wanted to hit on a couple. Yeah. One,
I really like our cone snails. You know about these
cone snails? Cone snails? Look them up? They live under
the ocean. Uh. Some cone snails shoot prey with these

(09:38):
bio harpoons they have containing neurotoxins. Snails have a lot
of have a lot of harpoons going on, guys, anyway,
go ahead. Yeah, there are also species of cone snail
that I just read about this today. They attack their
prey with blasts of insulin, which cripples fish by drastically
lowering their blood sugar, and then the snails can just

(09:59):
kind of lurp them up. Yeah. Yeah, there's apparently a
couple of different species of kinds down. Some of them
have these little harpoons, and others have this kind of
area effect. They they sort of let loose this this
miasma of toxin stuff. And one of those toxins is insulin,
And that's crazy to me. They're they're looking into using, um,
the production of this insulin for like diabetes research. Yeah,

(10:22):
and that highlights something we're going to talk about in
the medical tech part of this episode, which is that
a lot of these toxins can have a positive effect
on the body in one way or another if you
have a specific kind of thing you need to do,
because these toxins are designed by evolution to be efficacious
to create some kind of change in animal bodies, right,

(10:44):
and if that's the kind of change you want to
create to help somebody's medical condition, it can be good news.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Um. One more that is not useful
as far as we know is platypus venom Did you guys,
were you aware that platypuses are venomous? I did not
know this before today. Is this common knowledge? I thank

(11:05):
you for not using the word platypie. That's not a word.
I don't I don't think it is correct. I think
it's like octopuses, Like people have slowly started losing that
bizarre poor latin um. I think I might have heard
that platypuses are venomous. But tell me about it, Okay. So,
male platypuses specifically have spurs on their hind legs, like

(11:26):
one on each hind leg that can provide a sting um.
Females are born with these spurs, but they fall off
before they reach adulthood. Um. And these spurs are used
in defense against predators because I mean, I would not
attack a platypus because it's really cute. But I understand
that not everything in the wild has those reluctances. But um,

(11:48):
they can also be used. The spurs can also be
used used offensively during mating season against against platypuses competitors
for a specific mate. I'm yeah, yeah. Um. They deliver
enough of a punch to to kill something the size
of a of a platypus or say a dog, but
not a human, although their venom does cause a great

(12:09):
deal of pain in humans, and it does so by
some neurotoxin mechanism that is not regulated by morphine. So
so if you get stung by a platypus and you
go ow lots of ow, and a normal doctor response
would be to be like, well, oh, here's some morphine
that will help you feel not ow anymore. Doesn't work?

(12:31):
Oh wow, Yeah, that's crazy. It's like they thought of everything,
you know, though, I do have to imagine in the wild,
most platypus deaths are the result of over zealous nineteenth
century naturalists from like the Great London Society that that
sounds likely. It's a very sad there should really be

(12:53):
a conservancy group, Pip Pip. Yeah. But despite all this,
I want to highlight that it's really important not to
demonize venomous animals, especially platypus. Is right, we don't need
to wipe platypuses off the face of the earth. We
don't need to get rid of the inland type. And

(13:13):
generally these animals are not very threatening to humans. They
just want to be left alone. Venom is a strength
trait that these creatures possessed to survive, just like your
dogs teeth and jaw muscles, or your meaty hands which
I point out are perfect for punching and strangling, or
your big mutant brain. I mean, all kinds of creatures

(13:33):
have defense and predation mechanisms. Just because it's scary to
you doesn't mean that these creatures are worth being looked
at a scance, right right, And as we mentioned briefly
earlier and are about to go into in detail, a
lot of the venoms that these things produce have these
awesome medical uses, another reason not to demonize them. Yes,

(13:57):
a lot of time venoms are neurotoxins. These see, they
affect the nervous system and can cause on on the
negative end, anything from like dizziness to difficulty breathing, to
blurred vision to muscle seizure. And and that idea in
nature is generally to either paralyzed prey so that you
can eat it yea um, or to hurt predators enough
so that you can escape from them. And uh. Other

(14:21):
toxins might like affect other types of cells like blood
or skin cells, which um you know, usually by killing
them by like rupturing the cell walls or something like that.
One really common one, um you might have heard of
it before, is using a proteins from snake venoms to
help dissolve blood clots in patients experiencing a heart attack
or a stroke. I think that's kind of the the

(14:43):
commonly heard of venom technology. Um, but lots of toxins
can be very useful. Yeah, And in fact, we already
use all kinds of toxins from venom in medical research today.
And we wanted to highlight a few of the strangest
and cool idea as we came across, and especially the
kind of upcoming ones things that are still being sort

(15:04):
of ironed out. Yeah, so I want to talk about
attacking brain tumors with scorpion venom. Okay, let's pretty weird idea.
Uh yeah, I would not. I mean if I had
a brain tumor and my first thought would not be
let's get some scorpions, Well, it might be soon, and
I want to paint a picture for you and help

(15:25):
explain why this would be. So. So let's say you
have a tumor in your brain. Obviously you want to
get that tumor out of there. Yes, So you need
to have a surgical procedure where they go in, they
open up your skull and they remove all the tumor
tissue so that it doesn't spread to other parts of
your body or keep growing and eventually kill you. So

(15:45):
you want to cut out all of the cancer cells
while we're moving as little healthy tissue as possible. But
especially in the brain, that's really tricky. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Well it's not always as easy to tell the difference
as you might think. So you can take a pre
op m r I. You can put somebody in an
m r I machine and get a picture of the
inside of their head to try to get some idea

(16:07):
of what the edges of the tumor look like. But
this isn't perfect and you can miss sections and that's
really bad. This often happens. You hear about this, people
going to have a brain tumor removed, and it only
turns out later like, oh no, right, we didn't get
all of it, and then they might have to have
another surgery, and uh, it's a very bad thing. On

(16:30):
the other hand, if you cut too much, we're talking
about the brain here, it's pretty obvious why that is
not a good option. You don't want to remove healthy tissue.
You can have debilitating effects. So there's a guy named
Jim Olson who's a pediatric oncologist, mean he treats cancer
and children and a clinical researcher at the Fred Hutchinson

(16:52):
Cancer Research Center in Seattle, And for a while now
he's been leading research on a medical technology to help
with this problem. And it's called tumor paint. Tumor paint,
weird name, but hold on for a second here and
we'll we'll explain how it works. So, tumor paint is
a protein linked fluorescent dye and it's derived from a

(17:15):
toxin that you find in the venom of a death
stalker scorpion. Death stalker scorpion. Best name for an animal
ever come up with by anyone, the death stalker scorpion.
So the relevant toxin is called chloro toxin, and this
is a toxin that works by blocking chloride ion channels

(17:35):
and cells. And the death stalker scorpion uses the toxin
to paralyze its prey, which would be you know, tasty
insects like cockroaches or something, to paralyze them, not not
monom eatum up. The thing about chlorotoxin is that it's
not toxic to humans. Side note, this does not mean
that death stalker venom is harmless to humans. There is
other stuff in there that will get you. Don't go

(17:57):
playing with those things in general, do not go play
with scarpions. No. But when applied to humans, chlorotoxin actually
tends to bind or it's sort of like prefers to
bind to glioma cells. And that's one type of it's
a particular type of brain cancer cell. So you make
the tumor paint by joining two ingredients, you've got a

(18:17):
chlorotoxin based substance that does what it does. It binds
to these tumor cells in the body. It seeks out
the cancer cells and it penetrates them and then linked
to that, you've got to die. That lights up when
viewed under a special camera and lit up with a
near infrared laser. So in the surgical context, what you

(18:40):
do is you have someone with a brain tumor and
you're about to go in for surgery, and you inject
some tumor paint into the patient. It binds to the
cancer cells in the brain tumor, and then the surgeon
can shine that near infrared laser at the brain section
to make a hidden tumor into a glow in the
dark tumor, and it's easy to disting ship from the

(19:00):
surrounding tissue, and viewed through that special camera that they
have right next to the operating table, it glows this
blue green. Therefore, it's easier for the surgeon to manage
the margins with precision, you know, getting all of the
cancer with without removing too much healthy tissue around the sides.
According to s September press release from the Fred Hutchinson Center,

(19:22):
version of tumor paint called b l Z one hundred
was approved for clinical trials in the United States. And
that's really exciting news, but it's also a reminder that
you know, the safety and efficacy of this method is
not fully proven yet and the treatment has a lot
of testing left to undergo, so we don't know everything
about it yet. But it's really interesting and exciting that

(19:44):
this could be a big breakthrough and how to help
people with brain tumors. But as great as it sounds,
it might not be the only application of tumor paint.
In addition to these brain cancer cells the glioma, it
might be useful in pinpointing other can't your cells like
lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal and sarcoma's. They've

(20:06):
even talked about using it to pinpoint non pigmented skin
cancer cells that are hard to see. Wow. Yeah, yeah,
Oh that's terrific. None, none of the things that I
have been researching for for this podcast are quite at
the clinical trial stage yet. They're all still being done
in in animal testing, but are nonetheless pretty exciting. Um

(20:31):
there there's some indication that a particular type of spider
venom could be the viagra of the future. Really now, see, okay,
I have to reveal here. Oh this that sounds weird No,
I was just going to say that, I am. I
don't like spiders, okay, I mean, I really appreciate them

(20:55):
as animals. Actually, I love looking like at pictures of
spiders on the computer and stuff. I don't like it
when they're in my house. They kind of freaked me out.
I think that's that's completely understandable. There's a whole science
behind why we find spiders super creepy. Um. They they
set off all of these evolutionary things that are like,
why is that thing moving that way? And why is

(21:16):
it scuttling towards me? Um, scuttling. The scuttling has a
lot to do with it. They do seem like, even
though they're quite common on Earth, they seem like aliens. Yeah. No,
I'm with you. They're super creepy. I think they're very beautiful.
But um, okay. So one side effect of some arthur
pod venoms is priapism, which is after the gods, right,

(21:40):
is it is that? How that gets there? That's cool?
I believe I believe he was a an amorous deity
of Greek origin. Okay, yes, so, so priapism is a
painfully extensive erection, all right, um of the penile tissue
and uh specifically two or three Arthur pods, all of

(22:03):
them from Brazil. We've got the extremely toxic Brazilian wandering
spider and the Brazilian yellow scorpion um have been the
two that I've seen most commonly researched for this. Um
that they have venoms containing chemicals that can cause priapism
in their victims. Now, obviously that's not a condition you

(22:23):
want to seek out actually occurs, No, I would not.
I mean they're also pretty deadly and that is awful. Yes,
uh so, okay, it was a good while before anyone
really tracked down what these chemicals are. But because erectile
dysfunction is a shall we say, fertile business is a

(22:43):
multibillion dollar industry, UM researchers have been working on it,
and to be serious, it really is a very important
quality of life issue, especially in men who have lost
function as a side effect of, you know, receiving really
important treatment for serious diseases like prostate cancer. UM So,
it's it's not all goofy ha ha, penis times um

(23:04):
so so around though, a group out of the Medical
College of Georgia, which is here in Georgia. It's down
in augusta UM started isolating a peptide called p n
t X two dash six. Okay, so this is a
specific peptide found in the venom of these Brazilian Yes,
and I do not understand how this process works. UM.

(23:28):
According to studies that these researchers released, the peptide effects
excitable ion channels, mainly sodium channels. So I'm pretty sure
it has to do with the chemical activation of electromuscular responses. UM.
And furthermore, it happens to target or or I guess
more precisely preferentially localize in penile tissues, sort of the

(23:52):
same way that your your your brain cancer tumor paint
stuff UM preferentially selects brain cancers else. So Uh, nature
is great, UM and terrifying. But wait a minute, does
this mean we're going to have people like people in
the pharmaceutical industry like mass milking spiders to create pills

(24:16):
for rectile dysfunction. Uh No, which is good, because that
is the worst thing I've thought of all day. Um. No, No,
no one is planning huge farms filled with deadly spiders. Um.
Some peptides, as it turns out, are really easy to
recreate artificially in labs, generally by by scooping out bits
of DNA from bacteria and replacing them with the genetic
code for the production of whatever peptide you want to create. UM. So,

(24:40):
so you're just turning bacteria into little peptide cows um
and and and this is one of those peptides that
it's pretty easy to do that with. UM. The next
one that we are going to talk about is as well. Well,
you know, every time you get the chance, you bring
it back to bees. Are you going to talk about bees?
So going to talk about bees? Why do you love

(25:02):
bees so much? Because they're the best? Because I love bees.
If I didn't love bees as much as you did,
I'd say, not the bees. But I'm not going to
say that, So instead, Lauren, please the bees, please? All right. So,
supposedly be venom has been used in medicine for thousands
of years already. Hippocrates is said to have used it

(25:22):
in the treatment of arthritis. So I don't want to
be a downer about that, but I get the feeling
looking at some of this bee venom literature that I
think there are a lot of kind of hokey claims
out there about Oh be venom, it'll do this, it'll
do that, Get yourself stung by a bee, it'll be terrific. Yeah.
It sounds like one of those old world kind of

(25:42):
remedies where it's like, oh, no, you've got the rheumatism,
Go rub your face on the bark of a tree
that was used to hang a man who stole the duck. Well,
there there are some alternative medicine claims that I am
not sure of the veracity of about be venom out there,
and I certainly do not recommend that anyone go out
and get themselves stung by bees in order to cure

(26:05):
whatever it is that you want to cure. But b
venom is being her being year no uh, or it's
being investigated rather for for cancer therapies scientists, by legit scientists,
not by all farmer Jim down by the watering hole. Well,

(26:25):
let's hear all about it, all right. So there was
a study done at Washington University in stan Louis that
was published in two thousand nine took one of the
operative toxins in b venom, which is a peptide called
malitten or molten or meltinin or something to that extent,
but at any rate that they can insert malitten into
nanoparticles called flora carbons, which you may remember us talking

(26:49):
about in our episode on artificial blood back in August. Okay,
so these were kind of like they wanted to create
artificial oxygen carrying cells. Right. As it turns out, these
things were really crap at delivering oxygen, but they're pretty
good at delivering venom peptides. Just what I needed, and

(27:11):
I'm out of blood. To give me some venom, right,
that's what runs through mob blood UM and AH. In
a ridiculous or possibly ridiculously brilliant like research marketing move,
the team chose to call these um mulighten bonded per
flora carbons nanobees. Nanobees. Nanobes. They know how to get

(27:36):
some media attention. Nanobees, y'all. Nanobees. That's a good word.
It feels good to say. They sting cancer tumors to
death was an actual headline that appeared on the Telegraph.
The Telegraph also knows how to do headlines. They do nanobees.
I dare you, I dare you listener to look at

(27:58):
the word nanobees like a head write it down on
a piece of paper on your computer right now and
look at it and try not to laugh. Na, it's
physically impossible. It's the best word, Okay, But seriously, um
so they so they added to these nanoparticles, um the
the b venom peptide maliten, and also a targeting agent

(28:21):
that binds to a particular molecule that's found on the
surface of newly developing blood vessels, which tumors are super
rife with. Yeah, um so uh. As as a bonus
to all of these tumors are also hoarders, they keep
particles in so once these nanoparticles uh you know, attached

(28:43):
to the surface of the blood vessels and then get
into the tumor, they don't get pushed out. And I'm
a little bit shady on the exact science of of
the next part, because again I'm not a scientist, but
it sounds like these nanoparticles take advantage of a really
specific like cell membrane protein transfer process to get the
m lighten into the cancer cells and then destroy them

(29:05):
from the inside out. So that's pretty super uh. And
the same process basically might be able to kill the
human immuno deficiency virus wo HIV. Yeah, let's heart that
all right. So another study done at Washington University in St.

(29:26):
Louis published in applied m lighten to to this other task.
The researchers noted that m lighten can destroy the skin
or the coding that protects an HIV virus. And I
know he's just said virus twice, but yes, so I
mean m lighten destroys lots of cells and to keep

(29:49):
the other cells around these virus is safe, the researchers
load the m lighten into those little nanoparticle structures, which
also happened in a into the stuff that I said
earlier with the cancer. They also happened to create little
like bumpers around uh the mu lightened particle. So your

(30:09):
blood cells are huge and they bounce off the bumpers,
but anything as small as a virus will slip right
through the bumpers and come into contact with the MU
lighten and totally die. Wow. So they sound like big
claims about bevinom so I'm sure we would have heard
more about them if the if the research was really
far along, right. Uh yeah, okay, So so they're they're

(30:29):
really hoping and when they put out press releases about
this research being published. Um, they said that, you know,
with further testing, they might be able to do fabulous
things like develop a gel that can be applied vaginally
that will reduce HIV transmission, or that uh into into
something that could even be injected into the blood stream
of infected patients to reduce that infection in the body.

(30:53):
And and those are big hopes. But there you know,
they haven't been tested out yet. This is all ill
uh in in vitro I believe being done in laboratories,
in glass dishes, uh, not in live animals, and so
there's still a lot of testing to be done. I
if you've seen headlines about this and someone was going like, yes,

(31:14):
it is the cure for HIV, uh, that's just the
media doing what the media does with medical news and
overstating things dramatically. It's easy to get excited about promising
preliminary research. Yeah, we do it here sometimes of course,
it's when somebody says, hey, we could cure something, especially
if we could cure it in a really bizarre and
interesting way that includes b venom Yeah, and nanobees. Yeah,

(31:38):
We're like, yeah, we're on nanobe's lead us into the future. Well,
I hope the nanobees and all these other things do
turn out. But this isn't even be half of it.
There are all kinds of claims out there, some more
well substantiated than others, that various venoms cure or at
least provide partial relief from a wide range of ailment.

(31:59):
So it's one of those things where I think there
there's a ton left that we could find out. Venoms
are are an interesting source of medicine because we already
know that their potent at doing things. You know, it's
not like, hey, let's try a capsule made from the
bark of some random tree and see does it do anything?

(32:21):
Uh No, I mean yeah, it's not like you have
to boil a venom down to I mean I mean
usually just very tiny particles within them, very small proteins
and peptides and stuff. Are so efficient. Yeah, yeah, that
they do a job within bodies already. Usually it's a
job that you don't want done to your body, but

(32:44):
it might be something that actually saves your life. So
I think this has been a lot of fun to
talk about. So maybe in the future we will revisit
the topic of venom and bring even more research into
developing venom tech and venom medicine. Yeah, yeah, there's there's
a bunch of stuff that we didn't quite get a
chance to cover today. So if there's anything that you
can think of that we have not discussed about venom,

(33:07):
then you should get in touch with us. The ways
that you can do that are via email at FW
Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. You can go
to our website FW thinking dot com to yea to
check stuff out look around, I mean, if you're into websites.
If you're not into websites, if you're into social media,
then you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus,

(33:29):
where in our screen names are variations of f W thinking.
You guys, are you're you're smart, You'll you'll find us
um and yeah, let's let us know. Let us know
what you thought about this episode, what you think about venom,
what other topics you would like us to discuss, because
we really love getting all of your incredible ideas and
turning them into really good podcasts. So do that, uh,

(33:52):
And whether or not we hear from you, you will
hear from us again very soon. For more on this
topic and the future of technology, visit Forward Thinking dot
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