Only one worked to fully protect cells against the deadly mushroom – indocyanine green,or ICG,an injectable dye used in medicine since 1956.
“We know little about how mushroom toxins kill cells,” lead researcher Professor Qiaoping Wang,of China’s Sun Yat-Sen University,said.
“The revelation that an already FDA-approved drug could potentially block the protein responsible for mushroom toxicity came as a complete shock.”
Death caps cause 90 per cent of fatal mushroom poisonings. A piece the size of a 20-cent coin is enough to cause catastrophic liver failure and kill an adult within days.
University of Sydney genetics expert Professor Greg Neely developed the venom and toxin screening techniques that made the discovery of the proposed antidote possible.
The method uses CRISPR screening,which works by taking a mixture of cells and disabling a different gene in each cell. Researchers then add a toxin – in this case amanitin,the death cap’s killer ingredient – to the mixture of mutant cells.