Venom: A Cure for What Ails Us
It’s often said that the difference between poison and a cure is the dose. Nowhere is that truer than with venom.
In biomimicry, my field of study, there are two ways to solve problems: problem to biology and biology to problem. The former means we identify a problem we want to solve and look to nature for guidance to find a solution. The latter means we study adaptations, designs, and talents in the natural world, and imagine ways to apply them in the human-built world.
Medication breakthroughs often fall into the latter category, leading to stories about happy accidents, happenstance, and long-overlooked research discovered and applied by junior researchers that lead to medicines that end up generating hefty fortunes. Work with venom (poisons actively injected through an animal’s bite) has yielded numerous medical discoveries, solving problems that long eluded the most skilled researchers.
Existing venom-based solutions are already widely used. Venom from the Brazilian viper brought to a lab by an intern led to the development of captopril, one of the primary drugs used to treat high blood pressure. Tarantula venom has led to medication that treats pain by turning off specific nerve cells. Venom from the Gila monster, a reptile that spends 95% of their life underground, led to exenatide, a drug to treat diabetes. The Gila monster’s venom also led to the creation of weight-loss drugs causing a shake-up in medicine and society: Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound; it may soon give us medications to treat and prevent kidney and heart disease as well as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
All the new venom research underway may hold the key to happier, healthier, more vibrant lives for all of us. Researchers are now looking to spider venom as a mitigation treatment for stroke patients that would limit the nerve damage they suffer from, scorpion venom as a treatment for cancer that could replace radiation and chemotherapy with far better alternatives, and sea-anemone venom to treat autoimmune diseases.
All this venom talk, from some of the vilified animals on the planet, is a reminder to all of us that nature and all species with whom we share this planet have something to offer. They all have a place in our world, in our ecosystem, and we would do well to give them the respect, protection, and space they deserve. Yes, we all love the cute and cuddly, the charismatic and stately, the good and goofy. Instagram is loaded with them. Can we find it in our hearts to also appreciate the creepy, crawly, and yes, venomous? I certainly hope so. Living our best lives may very well depend on them and what they have to teach us.