![]() "One way we do this is to figure out how painful venoms from Australian creatures work using brand new CRISPR technology. "Most of our work is directed at developing non-addictive pain killers for humans," said Associate Professor Neely. ![]() In 2018, pain and chronic pain cost $139 billion to the Australian economy and is heading towards $215 billion by 2050, according to Pain Australia. They are studying a range of deadly Australian creatures - the box jellyfish, and a wide variety of other venomous animals - in order to understand what causes pain. But if you spray, it could neutralise what's left outside of your body."Īssociate Professor Neely and his team are now looking for potential partners to work on making the medicine available to the public.Īssociate Professor Neely's team work in functional genomics and study chronic pain at the Charles Perkins Centre and he heads the Sydney Genome Editing Initiative at the University of Sydney. The argument against a cream is when you are stung it leaves lots of little stingers in you so if you rub the cream on it might be squeezing more venom into you. But the plan would be a spray or a topical cream. "You need to get it onto the site within 15 minutes. "Our antidote is a medicine that blocks the venom," said Associate Professor Neely. If it's a major sting, continuous CPR is needed to keep the heart beating. The venom used in the study was collected from a box jellyfish off the waters of Cairns by Associate Professor Jamie Seymour at James Cook University.Īnecdotal evidence suggests the only current treatment for a sting is dousing the area with vinegar for 30 seconds or running very hot water over the affected area for 20 minutes. We don't know yet if it works on other jellyfish, but we know it works on the most-deadly one." "We studied the biggest, most venomous and scary one," said Associate Professor Neely. There are two types of box jellyfish, the Irukandji, which is tiny, and the Chironex fleckeri, which is about three metres long. They feed in shallow waters, mainly small fish and prawns. They don't just float, they can actively swim, gaining speed of 7.5 kilometres an hour when they are hunting. That will need more research and we are applying for funding to continue this work."įound in coastal waters in northern Australia and into the waters around the Philippines, the box jellyfish is extremely dangerous. "We don't know yet if it will stop a heart attack. "We know the drug will stop the necrosis, skin scarring and the pain completely when applied to the skin," said Associate Professor Neely, who is the senior author on the paper. "I haven't seen a study like this for any other venom." "It's the first molecular dissection of how this type of venom works, and possible how any venom works," Dr Lau said. ![]() We took one of those drugs, which we know is safe for human use, and we used it against the venom, and it worked," said Dr Lau, who is the lead author on the paper. "The jellyfish venom pathway we identified in this study requires cholesterol, and since there are lots of drugs available that target cholesterol, we could try to block this pathway to see how this impacted venom activity. From the whole genome screening, the researchers identified human factors that are required for the venom to work. Then they added the box jellyfish venom - which kills cells at high doses - and looked for cells that survived. In the study, the researchers took a vat of millions of human cells and knocked out a different human gene in each one. ![]() Genome editing is a technology that allows scientists to add, remove or alter genetic material in an organism's DNA. Published in the journal Nature Communications today, the study used CRISPR whole genome editing to identify how the venom works. Luckily, there was already a drug that could act on the pathway the venom uses to kill cells, and when we tried this drug as a venom antidote on mice, we found it could block the tissue scarring and pain related to jellyfish stings," said Associate Professor Neely. Using new CRISPR genome editing techniques we could quickly identify how this venom kills human cells. "We were looking at how the venom works, to try to better understand how it causes pain. Researchers now hope to develop a topical application for humans.
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