{"id":12632,"date":"2012-12-12T15:37:37","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T01:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=12632"},"modified":"2023-03-15T14:04:36","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T00:04:36","slug":"box-jellyfish-research-breakthrough-by-manoa-biochemist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2012\/12\/12\/box-jellyfish-research-breakthrough-by-manoa-biochemist\/","title":{"rendered":"Box jellyfish research breakthrough by M\u0101noa biochemist"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 3<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Youtube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nFv7_PUYvGE?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" width=\"676\" height=\"380\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Angel Yanagihara<\/strong>, a researcher at the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai\u02bbi<\/span> at M\u0101noa has developed a medicine that effectively treats the sting of a box jellyfish. Though the sting is usually just a painful nuisance in <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai\u02bbi<\/span>, it is deadly in places like Australia, Thailand and Indonesia. Yanagihara works for the university\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbrc.hawaii.edu\/\">Pacific Biosciences Research Center<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/jabsom.hawaii.edu\/jabsom\/\">John A. Burns School of Medicine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Her work was published in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0051368\">December 2012 edition of <em>PLOS ONE<\/em><\/a>, the world\u2019s most prestigious, open access, online scientific journal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is extremely satisfying to me is to bring this 14-year hunt and work to a peer review end,\u201d said Yahagihara.<\/p>\n<p>That hunt started when Yanagihara, a biochemist, was severely stung by box jellyfish in 1997 while swimming near Waik\u012bk\u012b. That\u2019s when she discovered that little was known about what causes the sting\u2019s burning pain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey certainly brought the battle to an interested person,\u201d said Yanagihara. \u201cWhen I got stung, I got motivated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 1998, Yanagihara identified a toxin in the venom that has since been found in all box jellyfish around the world. She soon discovered the toxin was the kinetic leader, or locomotive, that drives the venom. Her next discovery was a group of compounds that blocks the toxin\u2019s effect on human blood cells and then came the tests on more than 300 laboratory mice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust injecting the venom into the mice, cause death of a 100 percent of the animals within 20 minutes, whereas when we follow that up with the treatment, most of the animals, over 75 percent of them, survived the entire 12-hour observation period,\u201d said Yanagihara, adding that the technology to treat the stings is being developed and may be on the market soon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot only is it a technology that is applicable for life threatening stings, but also for our local burning stings,\u201d said Yanagihara.<\/p>\n<p>She said that this is just the beginning and that her research on box jellyfish could lead to breakthroughs on things like treating wounds and septic shock.<\/p>\n<p>It is just another example of the impact <abbr>糖心Vlog官方<\/abbr> can have on the state and the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a real strong point of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai\u02bbi<\/span> and the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai\u02bbi<\/span> here at M\u0101noa,\u201d said Yanagihara. \u201cWe have state of the state-of-the-art facilities so we can put together a community to address really unusual types of topics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yanagihara and her team are still out on Waik\u012bk\u012b beach every month in the middle of the night collecting box jellyfish. She even became a certified scientific diver to study the creatures in their habitat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is pretty scary,\u201d said Yanagihara. \u201cYou know there are tiger sharks out there at 3 a.m. where you are diving. Anyway, it has been a magnificent kind of journey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She credits her success to her departments\u2014the Pacific Biosciences Research Center and the <abbr>糖心Vlog官方<\/abbr> medical school and colleagues from around the world, but says it is the funding from the <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai\u02bbi<\/span> Community Foundation, which has been on board since the beginning, that really made a difference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we were able to persevere and get to this point so all thanks go to HCF for their vision and their support of this work,\u201d said Yanagihara.<\/p>\n<p>Read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/article.php?aId=5482\">University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai\u02bbi<\/span> news release<\/a> for more about Yanagihara\u2019s discovery.<\/p>\n<p><em>Editor\u2019s note of December 13, 2012: Contrary to some media reports of this news story, this treatment is not an antivenom (i.e., antibody based approach) but a molecular blocker or inhibitor of pore formation. The treatment is zinc gluconate. There should be no confusion with other forms of zinc, such as zinc oxide, which is a different oxidative state of the metal or different forms of the counter ion gluconate.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><abbr>糖心Vlog官方<\/abbr> M&#257;noa Angel Yanagihara has developed a medicine that effectively treats the sting of a box jellyfish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,12],"tags":[1032,31,175,262,149,9,56],"class_list":["post-12632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-video","tag-jellyfish","tag-john-a-burns-school-of-medicine","tag-marine-biology","tag-marine-science","tag-pacific-biosciences-research-center","tag-uh-manoa","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12632"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174302,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12632\/revisions\/174302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}