Cuba Develops Anti-Cancer Drug from Blue Scorpion Venom

Source: NY Transfer News by: Arnaldo Coro, Radio Havana Cuba 11/26/2000

In Guantanamo province, at the very extreme eastern end of the island of Cuba, there is a medical university. The Facultad de Ciencias Medicas of Guantanamo or in English, the Guantanamo Medical School, is not only engaged in actively training doctors and nurses at both the pre-graduate and the post-graduate level... There, professors and students are also involved in several very interesting research projects. The most important and certainly very significant one has just completed all the paperwork for a patent application that was granted by the National Patent Office of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment.

The patented pharmaceutical developed in Guantanamo is a new anti-cancer drug that is obtained from blue scorpion venom.

The name of the new anti-cancer drug is ESCOAZUL and tests have now been completed with some three thousand patients, with very promising results. ESCOAZUL was also tested with patients who had Parkinson's disease and kidney disfunction, who also evolved satisfactorily when the new drug was given to them as a diluted oral preparation of the cuban blue scorpion venom.

All the human subject research was carried out according to the strict international standards for toxicologic research, and after more than seven years of animal experiments done with albino rats that supplied by the National Center for the Production of Laboratory Animals -- which guaranteed their genetic uniformity, vital for this type of research project.

The ESCOAZUL anti-tumor pharmaceutical is now patented, but its future commercial availability is still some time away, according to Misael Bordier, a researcher at Guantanamo's Medical School laboratories and the person who leads the interdisciplinary research team that created the new anti-cancer and anti-inflamatory drug from the Cuban blue scorpion venom.

Preliminary reports on the more than three thousand patients treated so far are very encouraging, showing a high degree of effectiveness, but as Dr. Bordier explains, it is still early, and the pharmaceutical is still in what he describes as an experimental phase.

The Cuban Public Health authorities granted Dr. Bordier and his research group a permit to carry on experimental work on human patients, and this work has resulted also in additional findings that show ESCOAZUL has remarkable anti-inflammatory properties and also acts as a stabilizer of the human immune system.

The already granted patent protection is a very important step for this unique research project which, according to Cuban scientists who have worked on other similar pharmaceuticals, will very likely lead to a fully commercial drug that can be added to the already existing ones for cancer treatment.

And this was Breakthrough, a report on research into using blue scorpion venom to forumulate a new anti-cancer, anti-filammatory drug.

(c) 2000 Arnaldo Coro, Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.

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