March 17, 2003

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Research at UAB that shows promise in destroying brain tumors will be featured on the National Geographic Channel at 7 p.m. CST, on Thursday, March 20. The UAB work will be featured on the program “Nature’s Nightmares,” in an episode entitled “Spine Chillers: Scorpions.” UAB researchers developed and are testing a drug derived from scorpion venom that may successfully treat glioma, one of the most deadly forms of brain cancer. The program will also be re-run at 3 p.m. CST on Saturday, March 22.

A video crew from National Geographic visited the UAB campus in October of 2002 to tape interviews with Harald Sontheimer, Ph.D., whose laboratory did the first research that led to development of the drug, and Matt Gonda, president of TransMolecular, Inc., the company now handling the drug trial. UAB and City of Hope Hospital in Los Angeles are testing the experimental drug in brain tumor patients.

Of the 36,000 primary brain tumors reported in the U.S. each year, more than 17,000 are high-grade gliomas. About half of these patients die within a year, and few survive for even five years. Gliomas spread rapidly throughout the brain, making surgery, radiation and chemotherapy ineffective.

Sontheimer’s team discovered that a molecule based on the venom of a particular scorpion would bind to malignant tumor cells in the brain and not to healthy cells. This provided scientists with a method to deliver a cell toxin directly to the cancerous cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.