The discovery of an antidote for death cap poisoning in the Yang–Mills laboratory at Sun Yat-sen University
Doctors have little to offer people who accidentally ingest death caps, besides supportive care, despite their history of poisoning people. Qiaoping Wang and Guohui Wan, both drug-development researchers at Sun Yat-sen University, decided to research the area after seeing its potential.
Researchers are enthusiastic about the improvements this method could bring. Patoka says that there should be more scientific studies like this.
The discovery of a potential antidote for death cap poisoning came out of the blue. For Pringle and Brewer, who were not involved with the antidote discovery, the results came as a surprise.
How STT3B is the most dangerous poisonous mushroom? The case of the lethal amanita phalloides
Cells that lack a functional version of the STT3Bphosphatase are able to survive as shown in the screen. Sugar is added to the proteins with the help of STT3B. Interrupting this pathway somehow blocks α-amanitin from entering cells, preventing the toxin from fully wreaking havoc. Nobody had any idea that STT3B played a part in α-amanitin toxicity, and “we are totally surprised by our findings”, Wang says. Researchers are trying to figure out how a pathway with STT3B usually lets -Amanitin inside cells.
The scientists used a method that Wang and others developed a few years ago2 to find an antidote for jellyfish venom. They first used CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology to create a pool of human cells, each with a mutation in a different gene. They then tested which mutations helped the cells to survive exposure to α-amanitin.
“That’s fantastic,” says Helge Bode, a natural product chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. “α-Amanitin really is one of the most dangerous compounds that we have in nature.”
The Amanita phalloides, the death cap mushroom, is one of the most feared mushrooms. Killing angels and some other species is one way they form the group known as lethal amanitas which are responsible for most mushroom poisoning deaths around the world.
Most mushrooms are not dangerous, and foragers should ignore warnings about the dangers of poisonous mushrooms. In reality, “the vast majority are completely innocuous,” says Marin Brewer, a mycologist at the University of Georgia. “There’s a really small percent that are tasty gourmet edibles, and then a really small percent that are poisonous.”
The death cap can be mistaken for delicious mushrooms such as paddy straw, even if the untrained eye isn’t used to it. Death caps grow widely in Europe and western North America, and can easily fool foragers from countries where death caps don’t exist but the lookalikes do.
New Hope for an Antidote to Death Cap Muhrooms and Other Poison Fungi Induced Diseases
Pringle is optimistic that human trials can help treat poisonings from mushrooms around the world.
To test the effectiveness of ICG, you have to wait until someone eats a death cap. Then doctors can give the patient the drug and see if it helps.
“If the word antidote is used to mean, like, you give it and everyone recovers, it’s probably not quite there yet, because you haven’t tested it in humans,” says Pringle. It’s difficult to do human trials because you can’t feed people mushrooms and then try to cure them.
The team decided thatIG is an effective antidote for treatingAMA toxicity in mice. It’s an encouraging sign – but we still don’t know how effective of an antidote it is in humans.
So the team used a computer program to look for FDA approved drugs that might block STT3B from working. They found a match in the compound ICG, an iodide based dye that has been used in humans since 1956 to help diagnose diseases in the eye.
A Chinese and Australian research team claims they may have discovered an antidote for death cap mushroom poisoning that’s already been approved by the FDA.
It can be hours before someone feels sick after mistakenly eating a mushroom. Initially, their symptoms typically include “horrible gastrointestinal problems, vomiting and diarrhea, and people are usually extremely dehydrated,” Brewer says.
The lethal amanitas produce a poison known as – Amanitin which can cause harm to the body’s internal organs. The cell processes in those organs are halted by it.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/05/17/1175494500/new-hope-for-an-antidote-to-death-cap-mushrooms-and-other-poison-fungi
A Mycologist and Expert on Death Cap Mushrooms (with an Appendix by Anne Pringle and J’infty)
Anne Pringle is a mycologist and expert on death cap mushrooms at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.