Relax, the spider is here to soothe you. Tampa Bay Times reported on Daniel Park, who won a state-wide science competition by using his computers to design a drug candidate for treating anxiety and depression by using tarantula venom:
“I definitely wanted to focus on mental health,” he said, noting that he has talked with friends and family who have struggled with anxiety and depression. “I think that’s a really important issue, and I wanted to use science and biology, which I’m really interested in, to actually help provide a solution.”
…
The venom Park chose to work with comes from a Trinidad tarantula and contains the toxin psalmotoxin, which has shown some promise in other treatments.
The venom targets a part of the brain called the amygdala, which serves as a kind of fear and stress center. When that area is overactive, it’s often linked to anxiety and depression.
So Park worked on tweaking the venom and eliminating its danger, designing it to calm an overactive fear response in the brain.
…
Park used computers running open-source software developed by universities around the world. He built and tested models of how his modified venom would behave. The advanced simulations could predict how the engineered protein binds to the brain, how stable it is and whether it will do what Park hopes — calm the brain’s stress response.
Computationally, at least, it has been a success. He has tested biological outcomes without a single test tube.
…
What Park has is a model. The next step is into the lab, where years of work and real-world testing awaits.