Gifts from the Gila monster
Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - 11:01
in Health & Medicine
Who would have thought that Gila monster saliva would be the inspiration for a blockbuster new drug for Type 2 diabetes? Or that medicines for chronic pain, heart attacks, high blood pressure and stroke would emerge from venom of the Magician's cone snail, the saw-scaled viper, the Brazilian lancehead snake and the Southeastern pygmy rattlesnake? These are just some of the sources contributing to the emergence of potential new drugs based on "peptides" that is the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine. Peptides are short sequences of amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins.