The natural insulin secreted by snails has good efficacy.

Natural insulin secreted by snails works three times faster than artificial insulin

Researchers at the University of Utah, in collaboration with their Australia counterparts, have discovered insulin molecules in venom produced by snails when they prey. This natural insulin regulates blood sugar levels in just five minutes, compared with 15 minutes for the fastest artificial insulin, the official website of the University of Utah said Tuesday.

Human insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas and associated with glucose uptake. It contains areas A and B. Diabetes is usually caused by impaired pancreatic function and normal secretion of insulin. At present, the most effective treatment is injection of artificial insulin. But the B part of insulin causes insulin molecules to aggregate into six-molecule aggregates, and injected insulin needs to break down aggregated insulin into individual molecules before it can work on patients. This degradation process often takes an hour, and even the fastest insulin on the market still takes 15 to 30 minutes to work. Scientists have tried to remove the B part, but the effect of doing so is that insulin loses its drug completely.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, biologist Helena Safarway of the university said they found that insulin in snail venom does not contain the B part, so it does not cause insulin molecules to aggregate. Laboratory tests have shown that snail insulin, although not as effective as human insulin, still lowers blood sugar and takes effect quickly within 5 minutes.

When snails prey on fish, they often secrete some venom into the water, so that the blood sugar of nearby fish rises to a peak and then drops rapidly, causing fish to faint, and snails can have a full meal. Over the long haul, snail insulin evolved to have a rapid response.

The researchers will next modify the structure of the artificial insulin to keep it lowering blood sugar even after losing the B-part, and test the efficacy of snail insulin or modified human insulin injected into the organism. In addition, researchers are working on an artificial pancreas device that mimics the way the human pancreas automatically delivers insulin doses to the body based on blood sugar levels, which could be developed next year and could be used in artificial pancreas devices in the future. (Reporter Nie Cuirong)