Sea snail key to pain relief

Painstaking work ... Dr Ekberg

Unique UQ research could revolutionise the treatment of pain – thanks to a humble sea snail.

Dr Jenny Ekberg, a Research Fellow with UQ’s School of Biomedical Sciences, has studied a toxin produced by a marine snail found on the Great Barrier Reef, which has the ability to precisely target chronic pain without severe side effects.

“Chronic pain can be caused by an initial injury that affects the nerves, or by conditions such as diabetes and arthritis,” Dr Ekberg said.

“The problem with current drugs, such as morphine, is that they sometimes offer only marginal relief and come coupled with lots of problems with tolerance and side effects.

“Our research shows that a natural product, a conotoxin from the marine snail Conus marmoreus, produces pain relief without apparent side effects in animal models.”

The study, completed with colleagues Professor David Adams in the School of Biomedical Sciences, Dr Richard Lewis at UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) and Professor Mac Christie at the University of Sydney, was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr Ekberg said with approximately one in five Australians suffering from chronic pain at some point in their lives, the potential benefit of the research was enormous.

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