Drug discovery at a snail's pace

Michael McIntosh of the University of Utah first came to prominence in 1979 when he discovered a toxin from the Conus magus, the magician's cone sea snail. This was developed into the cancer and AIDS painkiller Prialt, which was approved in the US in 2004 and in Europe in July 2006.  

McIntosh and colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology recently studied the snail Conus omaria, which lives in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and eats other snails, and discovered the new toxin α-conotoxin Om1A. McIntosh says the OmIA toxin will be useful in designing new medicines because the molecule fits like a key into the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor 'lock' found on nerve cells in the brain and the rest of the nervous system. 'Those are the same types of receptors you activate if you smoke a cigarette', he explains, 'but they have more important natural uses whether you smoke or not'.