Simplifying, Sharing, Evolving

That's the name of our Research Group: Laboratory for the Study of Animal Toxins and Cancer, or ToxiCan, for ease. The word defines us a bit, but we are a research group in Health Sciences, to be more precise.

 

I'll tell you a little more about what we do, but first of all, I need to say how happy we are to see this project come out of the drawer. The idea of showing us more and contributing to the dissemination of academic scientific research comes from a while. Still, the researcher's routine is pulled, and thus, the plan has been somewhat dormant. But it is a fact; we have seen how fundamental it is to bring academia closer to society as a whole, promoting this exchange full of a wealth of formal, technical, or even intuitive knowledge. With the blog, we intend to increase the range of our voice, and why not say it and our antennas, capturing what is happening around us.

 

Our focus is to develop research to study and describe how some toxins act in the body and their potential as medicines – that is, "from poison to medicine," mainly, but not only for cancer.

 

Animal poisons are fascinating and a rich source of compounds with many biological activities. An animal produces toxins as chemical weapons to feed or defend itself. And they are weapons of the most diverse. Some paralyze, others digest and destroy the tissues and cells of the prey. Still, others prevent blood clotting, ensuring that the venom keeps circulating. The biology behind these interactions is already too beautiful, but scientific research goes further, showing that such compounds can be used as medicines for various diseases. The idea is not new, and we have already found some drugs derived from poisons on the shelves of pharmacies.

 

Our trajectory as a research group on snake toxins brought us closer to the study of cancer when we demonstrated, more than 15 years ago, that a specific molecule derived from jararacuçu venom had a toxic effect on tumor cells. From that moment on, when trying to understand this phenomenon, we saw that toxins could also be used as tools and would help us describe the behavior of tumor cells. Scientific research is like that, we raise questions, and the answers lead us to new questions.

 

Cancer is a complex disease. It should be called "cancers" since each tumor type can be seen as a different disease. What unites them is the ability of the tumor cell to continue to multiply in an uncontrolled way. Disease sets in when normal cells transform and stop respecting the body's signals. In the worst case, they still detach from the tissue of origin and start to circulate, becoming lodged in other organs, compromising their functioning and possibly leading to the patient's death. This tumor progression is already well described in some types of tumors, but we still have a lot to learn about this abnormal behavior.

 

But this is pretty general information about our interests. This universe of toxins and cancer is vast, and throughout our posts, we will show that our group has focused on some specific toxins derived from snakes and tick saliva. Also, in cancer, our projects focus on breast cancer and neuroblastoma, a solid pediatric tumor. We have developed projects integrating these two major subjects, but we approach each of them independently also.

 

The purpose here is to talk about our discoveries and our work routine, showing a little of the reality of basic research within a Brazilian university. We are excited and look forward to interacting with other researchers and healthcare professionals and expanding our network of collaborations, especially with general stakeholders in our study topics and cancer patients and their families.