Conotoxin is toxin made by cone snails, which are fish eating snails that inhabit tropical coral reefs. Each of the 500 species of cone snail produces roughly 50 to 100 distinct conotoxins which they use to immobilize prey. Researchers believe that this sea snail venom could be used to create a pain medication to replace morphine.

Conotoxin has not yet been tested on humans but when tested on animals conotoxin could produce pain relief without the nasty side effects. The researchers believe that with more studies and testing on humans that conotoxin has the potential to completely revolutionize pain treatment for cancer patients and chronic pain sufferers.

Morphine can have a range of side effects including nausea, drowsiness and movement defects. If the research proves successful they hope the treatment will allow sufferer's to lead a normal life-- pain free.

Researchers will be using a synthetic version of a protein found in Giant Yellow Israeli scorpion venom in further clinical trials to treat glioma, one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer. In a two-pronged effect, the protein, called TM-601, has shown it can deliver radioactive iodine to the tumor and has cancer-fighting properties of its own in slowing tumor growth.

One of the challenges in treating brain tumors is the blood-brain barrier blocks chemicals from reaching the brain. While median length of survival for all glioma brain cancer patients is 27 weeks, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center researchers reported two of the patients treated with the synthetic version of the scorpion venom protein were still living almost three years post-treatment. TM-601 did not show any toxicity, did not affect neighboring tissue or body organs and what the body did not use was eliminated by the body. Researchers will be looking to test the synthetic version of the protein found in Giant Yellow Israeli scorpion venom on other forms of cancer.