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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Using tarantula toxin as a pharmaceutical guide
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:02
	Publish Date:		2016-07-26 19:00:00
	Description:		When it comes to the neuroscience of pain, toxins are a surprisingly handy research tool. Much of the nervous system uses what’s called sodium channels to carry signals to your brain. But if a pathway is problematic, the sheer diversity of these channels can make treatment a challenge. In a recent step towards more selective pain drugs, researcher Jeremiah Steen of the University of California, San Francisco found that a toxin in tarantula venom attaches to one type of these sodium channels that’s associated with sharp, biting pain. "These sodium channels are expressed all over the nervous system, and they have very subtle differences. And so, when you’re trying to design a drug, it’s just very hard to find a molecule that will recognize one of these subtypes and not others." And so, getting back to the tarantula toxin… "What was very interesting and serendipitous for us was that it was selective for a certain subtype of sodium channel. And that’s really what allowed us to study that sodium channel using the toxin."
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