Chinese spider may be key to global opioid crisis

In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, where tragic daily death tolls are constantly updated for us hour by hour, the novel coronavirus epidemic has resulted in a heightened awareness of the fragility of human life.

It is worth remembering that alongside this humanitarian disaster, other issues also plague the world. At the time of writing, the United Kingdom's novel coronavirus death toll is tentatively beyond the peak of the curve, at around 500 deaths a day. To put this in perspective, deaths in the UK from cancer which are constantly ongoing with no sign of ending anytime soon, are also around 450 per day, but do not receive the same media attention.

Likewise, the current opioid epidemic has been raging for several decades, and is killing hundreds of thousands globally, with pharmaceutical companies producing painkilling medications which are easy for patients to get addicted to, with disastrous results. It is estimated that in the United States, post-surgery around 6 percent of patients continue taking opioid medication off-label, leading to rampant destruction within US communities and abroad.

The key to solving this particular problem, however, may lie with a small creature found in Southern China. Researchers from the University of Queensland have found that molecules in the Chinese bird spider could potentially be used as a safer alternative to opioid painkillers in providing people with pain relief, both from trauma and post-surgery, to long-term chronic conditions.

An inconspicuous creature found in Hainan island in the south of the Chinese mainland, the Chinese bird spider's Latin name is aptly named after its home, cyriopagopus hainanus. The venom that the spider produces belongs to a class or peculiar neurotoxins also aptly named hanantoxins, which are capable of blocking the activity of neurotransmitters in the body, leading to the optimism over the compound's use in reducing pain in patients.

Christina Schroeder, who led the project from the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience, said the world's current opioid crisis means alternatives are needed extremely urgently for drugs such as morphine and its equivalents.

"Although opioids are effective in producing pain relief, they come with unwanted side effects like nausea, constipation and the risk of addiction, placing a huge burden on society," she said. "Our study found that a miniprotein in tarantula venom from the Chinese bird spider, known as huwentoxin-IV, binds to pain receptors in the body."

The researchers were able to isolate and alter the specific miniprotein of interest from the spider venom, increasing its potency in affecting specific pain receptors. Preliminary trials taken in mouse models have shown to be effective, and could potentially lead to alternative methods of treating pain, while at the same time minimizing side effects and addiction.

In 2015, the World Health Organization stated that worldwide, around 450,000 people died either directly or indirectly from opioid addiction and related disorders. To prevent such an ongoing global death toll would be an immense achievement, and despite the research still being in an early stage, it could yet bring significant change to our world.

Switching the way we manage pain from the extract of a poppy to the venom of a spider could be just as significant as finding a novel coronavirus vaccine in the future, based on numbers of lives saved, meaning that soon, millions of people around the world may owe their lives to a little spider that lives in small trees off the south coast of China.