Novel Anesthetic Discovered in Sea Snail

News of a 'new discovery' of a toxin from a sea snail discovered by Dr. Jenny Ekberg and colleagues at the University of Queensland, has been getting a bit of a splash around the place.
But hasn't MBP been working on this now for a year or so? Mbp are even in Phase 2 human clinical tests.
The sea snail that Mbp discovered its toxin from, was the Conus Victoriea. The 'newly discovered toxin' found by Dr. Jenny Ekberg and colleagues at the University of Queensland is from the Conus Marmoreus, virtually the same sea snail.
Maybe Mbp are helping with the research there, but it sounds a bit like plagiarism.
I may have missed something here and Mbp may be tied up but I have not heard there name tied up with this new discovery?

http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2006/12/novel_anestheti.html

'Novel Anesthetic Discovered in Sea Snail
Filed under: Anesthesiology , Pain

Dr. Jenny Ekberg and colleagues at the University of Queensland have discovered that a toxin from marine snail Conus marmoreus has interesting analgesic properties, similar to local anesthetics but without any motor blockade.

From the interview Dr. Ekberg gave to the press office of University of Queensland:

"The patient experiences severe pain because their nerve cells that are responsible for pain transmission are overactive," she said.
"This is primarily due to abnormal activity of voltage-gated sodium channels in the nerve cells.

"Conventional drugs, such as local anaesthetics, block all types of sodium channels, causing severe side-effects.

"Our toxin only blocks a specific channel -- the first time a toxin like this has been shown to work-- therefore providing pain relief without severe side-effects." '

Dear Brian,
Sorry for the confusion! The toxin from C. victoriae acts on a completely different target, the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. "My" toxin acts on the voltage-gated Na-channel Nav1.8 (and other Nav channels at a higher concentration). Sometimes important info. gets lost in news articles like the one from my university in the press release. I also said that toxins from similar snails that act on other receptors may be used in pain treatment, but that was deleted in most of my interviews etc. Another thing that wasn't well emphasised is that we are VERY VERY far away from a drug, and that this might not work at all in humans.

Regards,
Jenny Ekberg

Hi Jenny,
Thanks for the clear up.
Hope it all goes well for you and best of luck,
Brian