Scary

Happy Halloween! The venomous lizard shown above is the Gila monster which has an interesting place in the history of medicine. One of the newer medications for Type II diabetes, exenatide, was derived from a hormone found in the saliva of the Gila monster. This molecule is similar to a human protein that regulates glucose metabolism but the version found in the Gila monster lasts a lot longer. Although now exenatide is made directly through chemical synthesis, it demonstrates how new drugs can be found in nature. Indeed, a great example of this is premarin, estrogens derived from horse urine (the name comes from pregnant mare urine). Perhaps sometimes, it is better not to know where our medicines come from.

Image is in the public domain, from Wikipedia.