Fast way of making pufferfish’s neurotoxin may lead to new pain drugs

Alex Wilkins is a writer.

Novel drugs for pain relief and a better understanding of how the body's pain system works are possible if a quicker way of making one of the world's most potent neurotoxins is used.

Some animals, such as pufferfish and sea snails, have tetrodotoxin, which is made bybacteria. A small amount of it is enough to cause bodily paralysis and death in people. There is a lot of interest in tetrodotoxin's potential as a pain-relief drug because it is important to how we detect pain.

Although TTX is one of the most potent blockers of sodium ion channels, progress in developing drugs by using it has been slow because of the difficulty in synthesising it.

11 percent of the ingredients used in the process were turned into tetrodotoxin. The number of steps is reduced by at least a third thanks to this 10-fold improvement.

A key part of the molecule is produced in a different way. Adding nitrogen-based fragments to tetrodotoxin's core carbon structure isn't the way to go. The process of changing out a carbon-nitrogen bond for a carbon-carbon bond is simpler.

Neuroscience labs use tetanus to study how pain works at a cellular level. Alasdair Gibb at University College London says that it's almost impossible to replace it. One of the most useful tools for neuroscience research is it. Tetrodotoxin was found in almost every research lab that was doing neuroscience.

The discovery of a better way to synthesise tetrodotoxin could lead to new avenues of pain research. Researchers will be able to experiment with slight adjustments to the synthesis process to alter the structure, which could lead to drugs that act differently and more effectively.

Steve Roome says that the enhanced yield and reduced number of steps are huge improvements. If that 11 per cent yield can be translated to large scales within a manufacturing environment, then it would make a fantastic approach for the manufacture of TTX.

The journal's title is "science."

You can get the health, diet and fitness news you need every Saturday by signing up for our Health Check newsletter.