Meet The Deadly Snail With 4 Times More Powerful Venom Than Morphine

Predator: Cone snails paralyse their prey with their powerful venom

Meet the snail with a venom five times more powerful than morphine.

The cone snail lives uses its the substance to paralyze its prey before eating it.
Experts are now attempting to use the venom to create a new pain relief drug for humans.
Scientists have reported creating five new "experimental substances" based on a tiny protein from the Cone snail.


The substances, which could potentially be stronger than morphine, could one day lead to the development of a drug to treat chronic nerve pain, they said.

Lead author Professor David Craik, from the University of Queensland in Australia, said: "This is an important incremental step that could serve as the blueprint for the development of a whole new class of drugs capable of relieving one of the most severe forms of chronic pain that is currently very difficult to treat."

There are hundreds of species of cone snail which is usually found in warm and tropical water such as the Indo-Pacific region and the Cape coast of South Africa.

The venom contains hundreds of small proteins known as conotoxins which appear to have an analgesic effect in humans, he said.

Prof Craik and his team, who will present their finding at an American Chemical Society conference, are working to develop a conotoxin-based drug that can be taken orally - unlike the only drug that uses the protein now which must be injected into a patient's spine.

Experiments on rats have shown that a prototype drug has been shown to "significantly reduce pain", he said.

"We don't know about side effects yet, as it hasn't been tested in humans. But we think it would be safe," Prof Craik said.

"It acts by a completely different mechanism than morphine so we think it has a minimal possibility of producing the side-effects of that medication. That is one of the big advantages of this drug."

Amazing stuff.