Mandë Holford: Could Snail Venom Someday Save Your Life?

Cone snails are deadly sea predators; their venom can kill fish and even humans. But chemical biologist Mandë Holford says that powerful venom can actually be used for good — to treat human diseases.

 The intoxicating science of animal venom. What you need to know

Venomous animals are seen as agents of mystery and danger. However, animal venoms are a powerful, biochemical resource that can be leveraged to resolve global challenges. These range from identifying the origins of biodiversity to mapping the human mind and developing novel pain therapeutics.

 These life-saving drugs are made from deadly venom

If you ever have the misfortune to be bitten by a pit viper, stung by a cone snail, or come too close to the jaws of a Gila monster, at best, you’ll be in a lot of pain. At worst, it might be the last thing you do. These are some of the world’s most venomous creatures. Their potent toxins help them to survive, and they could also be responsible for saving your life one day.

 When Poison Is the Remedy

Chemicals found in the venom of Brazilian vipers have revolutionized how we treat hypertension, heart failure and kidney disease

Animal venom: a pharmacological goldmine

Scientists from the European research project VENOMICS, together with Alphabiotoxine, have established a high-throughput pipeline for the discovery of novel therapeutic peptides. The results are based on the largest collection of venom and tissue samples worldwide and are truly significant.

Black mamba snake venom could hold the key to new pain therapies

One of the world’s most poisonous snakes might hold the key to new pain therapies in its venom. As ironic as that sounds, a protein component in black mamba venom called “mambalgin” has been shown – in a Nature paper published today – to act as a pain killer in mice.

From Venoms to innovative Drugs with VENOMICS

Nature is still the first provider of novel chemical entities for innovative drugs. Each venom of the 170,000 venomous species on Earth is an extremely complex chemical cocktail comprising several hundred mini-proteins. Venoms can therefore be seen as large natural libraries of biologically active molecules that are continuously selected and highly refined by the evolution process.

The therapeutic virtues of venom

A poisonous task indeed, demanding endless patience, but potentially most beneficial.

Venom can kill – but with venomics, it can also cure

Over 2,000 years ago, the historian Appian of Alexandria reported that upon receiving a sword wound to the leg, Scythian doctors saved his life with “a small amount of steppe viper venom” that they used to stop the bleeding. Snake venom has been used in Ayurvedic medicine since the 7th century BCE to treat arthritis and gastrointestinal ailments, while tarantulas are used in the traditional medicine of indigenous populations of Mexico and Central and South America.

Venomics and antivenomics data: Current and future perspective

In recent years, the studies of animal venoms thanks to the advances in highly sensitive and high-throughput techniques such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have introduced large-­scale data from venoms known as venomics, and opened up new opportunities for biological and clinical venom applications.

Venomics in medicinal chemistry

To the general public, venomous animals often evoke repulsion or even uncontrollable fear, yet they also fascinate by their almost mystical dimension. For researchers, however, they represent an inexhaustible source of original ligands and molecular tools to dissect the function and understand the role of key physiological receptors. More recently, and due to the realization that some of these venom molecules have therapeutic potential, snakes, scorpions, cone snails, spiders and other critters have also and paradoxically become very attractive for pharmaceutical companies looking for inspiration for new drugs.

Venomics: A Mini-Review

Venomics is the integration of proteomic, genomic and transcriptomic approaches to study venoms. Advances in these approaches have enabled increasingly more comprehensive analyses of venoms to be carried out, overcoming to some extent the limitations imposed by the complexity of the venoms and the small quantities that are often available.