Dr. Dean Edell: For centuries animals have served humans as a source of food, transportation and companionship. Now in medical science we are seeing a redefinition of the term service animal from the depth of the sea to arid deserts to our own backyards, researchers are finding exotic and everyday creatures with a power to heal.
Desert predators and ocean occupants are now the source of hope for people suffering from disease.
Renee Relin: How did they figure that you go from a sea squirt to a drug that's going to work on this specific, esoteric kind of cancer?
Dr. Dean Edell: Renee Relin has soft tissue sarcoma, a cancer that affects muscles and organs.
Renee Relin: That was close enough to some critical vessels.
Dr. Dean Edell: When doctors discovered an inoperable tumor, Renee volunteered for a clinical trial, testing ET-743, a drug made from the toxins of a sea squirt.
Dr. Bruce Chabner: About 10% of the patients respond; that is, the tumors shrink significantly.
Dr. Dean Edell: The Israeli yellow scorpion is the inspiration for another cancer drug, TM-601. A synthetic copy of the scorpion's venom is helping patients with brain tumors.
Adam Mamelak: There are a variety of compounds in nature which are known to specifically excite cells in very detailed ways, some of them being toxins that come from insects, snakes, things like that.
Dr. Dean Edell: For example a Brazilian pit viper's venom is used to make captopril, a drug that lowers blood pressure. ABT-594 is derived from the poisonous skin of a South American frog. It blocks pain 200-times better than morphine and is not addictive. But none are without risk.
Paul Doering: The margin of safety maybe quite narrow, and you may be thinking you're given a therapeutic dose, but it may turn out to be a toxic or deadly dose.
Dr. Dean Edell: Transplant surgeon Marlon Levy is looking at a less exotic though equally controversial source to help patients lingering on transplant list.
Marlon Levy: The holy grail of all this a pig whose organs are not recognized as pig organs, but rather are seen essentially to have tissue that our immune systems thinks as human tissue.
Dr. Dean Edell: Dr. Levy has used pig livers to temporarily help to transplant patient survive until human donors could be found.
Marlon Levy: The ending of the story is that most of these patients are doing remarkably well today.
Dr. Dean Edell: Scientists are expanding the research, pig cells are now being studied to treat patients for Stroke, Epilepsy, Parkinson's, Huntington's disease and Diabetic. But again not everyone is comfortable with this brave new world.
Alix Fano: We do know that patients who have been exposed to pig cells and tissue do have pig DNA circulating in their blood, and that means they most certainly have pig viruses in their blood as well.
Dr. Dean Edell: Biotech companies are working to eliminate that by breeding pigs they say do not pass the virus. The one considered most dangerous to humans.
This may look like dogs play, but Rusty, Maggie and Ginger are on an important mission.
Female Speaker: Come on Rusty let's go to work, find it, find it, find it.
Dr. Dean Edell: Lawrence Myers and his team are looking at whether dogs with their keep sense of smell could help doctors sniff out diseases like skin cancer.
Lawrence J. Myers: People simply can go into a dermatologist office, and a dog can check them over instead of waiting for them to notice an abnormally shaped or colored mold.
Dr. Dean Edell: Psychobiologist Jim Walker is working with another pack of disease detecting dogs who are trained to find Prostate cancer.
Jim Walker: Any disease where there is any reason to think there are chemical clues coming from the body, it make sense to investigate if the dog can help the diagnosis.
Dr. Dean Edell: Stormy finds an odor that might come from a patient's breathe or urine.
Female Speaker: Good boy.
Dr. Dean Edell: Well dogs do their work on dry land scientist continue to fish through a sea of healing opportunities, and patients like Renee Relin are grateful.
Renee Relin: Thank God for whoever is that, got the patience to keep trying on stuff, but I think it's phenomenal.
Dr. Dean Edell: Doctors say that the drug from the sea squirt also looks promising for treating ovarian cancer and that breakthrough brain cancer drug TM601 recently received FDA approval.
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