Because of this disease...

Scorpions can kill. Just see the venom section! But they can help us humans, too. Every year, 24.000 Americans are diagnosed with a deadly brain disease called glioma. It's a form of braincancer and an especially dangerous one, because brain tumors caused by glioma can't be operated on. The cancerous cells manage to disperse themselves through the brain too quickly for a surgeon to do anything about it: by the time (s)he has discovered one tumor in one part of the brain, chances are the rest of the brain is also infected. Most patients don't survive more than two years. Also, survival rates haven't improved much in the last two decades. It has proved very resistent to any form of chemical or radiaton treatments.

The solution

But now, there's hope! Scientists have discovered a scorpion which can help. Glioma cells have the ability to "crawl" around the brain, slipping between other cells to reach healthy tissues in other parts of the brain, using GCC, the glioma-specific chloride channel. What happens is that chloride passes through the GCC, and pulls sodium and water out of the cell, shrinking the cell as a result, like a raisin. The Yellow Israeli Scorpion's venom includes chlorotoxins, which react strongly with the GCC. Researchers are planning to use the chlorotoxins as a smuggler, using them to get another deadly substance into the glioma cells using the GCC.

About the release date

Research in this area are promising, but a cure isn't around the corner yet. Tests in mice have shown that the chlorotoxins don't affect healthy parts of the brain, like neurons. Human clinical trials are expected at the end of 1999, but a drug wouldn't become available until several years after, if it works at all.