British scientists have claimed to have created the world’s first chili sauce that mimics the bite of a venomous spider.
Steve’s Scientific Sauce is said to be a world-first and was designed using laboratory test data on hundreds of arachnids.
Kent-based drug discovery business Venomtech produced it as a “side project” to its daily experiments on the creepy crawlies’ venom to inspire budding biologists.
The experts reckon the burn and tingling sensation from the sauce mimics the effect of being bitten by the Trinidad chevron spider.
“It’s as best as we can manage without actually tasting the venom,” managing director and founder Steven Trim, 41, said.
“It’s a similar heat component that the venom would cause.”
The idea came after he met with food marketer Stefano Cuomo, of Macknade, at a meeting two years ago.
“We focus on studying venoms and how they work in the biology for drug discovery and through this research we became aware that the Trinidad Chevron venom actually works on the same receptors as Capsicum,” Trim said.
“It was about two years ago when we had that first light bulb moment.”
They had to park the idea when the Food Standards Agency in the UK told Cuomo it would cost up to £20,000 ($26,350) to just test the venom was safe for consumption alone.
The pair decided to raise funds by creating the best synthetic version of the venom for a revolutionary new sauce — then hopefully have enough to fund the real thing.
“I did think it was crazy. I laughed it off at the time and said it was hilarious to do. Nobody has been foolish enough to try the venom,” Trim said.
“But we kept bringing it up when we bumped into each other over the year. We finally hit on the idea of doing a synthetic inspired sauce.”
Trim and his team isolated the venom’s peptide component — the only part that is relevant to taste and heat for humans — for tests.
The other components of the venom had other properties his team investigated for potential new anti-malarial and pain relief drugs.
Trim said he never even considered tasting the venom during the “many hours” his team of four worked on probing its effects on cell cultures.
“It’s hot, so for people who are big chili fans they often say it could be hotter, and for people who aren’t they say it’s hot, so it’s nicely in the middle,” he said.
“People who really like their chilies often say it’s really warm.”
The synthetic version uses normal chilies and flavors, and Trim has sold up to 300 bottles since its launch last Halloween.
“I have one something probably about once a week. Our aim for this was to make something over and above the science, is a really good product,” he said.
He said it went well with curries and quesadillas and he planned on releasing a mix with mayonnaise called ‘venomaise’ later this year.
Asked how he extracted the venom from his 300 spiders in his lab, he said: “Carefully.”
“We use a light anesthesia so when the spider is asleep, we can use a tiny electrical stimulation, it just contract the muscles around the venom glands and that extracts the venom harmlessly.
“There’s a team of four of us and we’ve all had input in this over the last year. It’s a side project for us.
“We have a lab with about 300 spiders in it for our daily work.
“These spiders produce about a tenth of a millimeter (0.004 inches) of venom per bite and so only a small component will actually be the actually useful component so we will need a lot more spiders than we currently have — a couple of hundred.
“It’s not there as a scare factor, it’s there because it’s the essence of the science of what we’ve made here.
“We know there are people that are arachnophobic –they cannot focus on anything but the image of the spider and it’s clearly not for them.
“We’ve spent many hours over the last year getting the story and the artwork ready.
“Our aim for this is to raise awareness of the versatility of spiders and hopefully people will understand a bit more about the amazing biology of spider venom through the medium of chili.”
Trim worked for 10 years as a drug discovery specialist at Pfizer after graduating in genetics from Aberystwyth University in Wales. He launched his company in Sandwich, Kent, nine years ago.