Venom-Based Drug Discovery

Venom components act on many biological targets with specific selectivity and high potency, which makes venom-derived components an attractive source compound for drug development. With the support of advanced omics technology and mass spectrometry technology, Creative Proteomics is committed to solving the practical problems encountered in the process of venom-based drug discovery, and providing venom peptide discovery services to promote the development of new drugs.

Drug Discovery from Venoms

There are many venomous species, such as snakes, spiders, bees, wasps, cone snails, jellyfish, ants, etc. They produce venom, which is a complex mixture, and each venom contains hundreds of different proteins/peptides. It is precisely because of the diversity of venomous species and the specificity of biologically active molecules that a large number of venom active ingredients may contain many therapeutically valuable drug candidates, which makes venom-based drug discovery a potential venom medicinal approach. At present, most of the active ingredients of venom are still undiscovered and explored. Our advanced analysis technology can help customers to promote the discovery and characterization of biologically active molecules of venom and accelerate the discovery of drugs.

Venom-Based Drug Discovery Services

Creative Proteomics provides venom-based drug discovery services, including:

• We use omics methods to identify putative biologically active venom components. Use genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and peptomics to sequence and analyze the venom gland, perform assembly, annotation, and mass spectrometry to obtain sequence data, and identify the putative biologically active components of the venom through bioinformatics methods.
• We use chemical analysis methods to target-specifically identify the biologically active components of the venom. We perform fractionation and purification of the venom, perform functional analysis and physiological pharmacological analysis of the purified biologically active molecules, and further sequence to identify specific targets.
• We synthesize/recombinantly express bioactive molecules. Perform detailed pharmacological and functional tests on synthetic or recombinantly expressed bioactive molecules.

Technical Route

We combine HPLC to separate and purify the venom, use tandem mass spectrometry to sequence the purified venom molecules, and add venomomics methods to jointly identify biologically active venom molecules, and then we can conduct detailed studies on synthetic or recombinantly expressed active molecules.

Screening Methods

We consider the expected target of your venom bioactive molecule and determine the identification and selection screening methods, including but not limited to the following.

• Cell analysis method. Including effective methods for screening venom peptides, such as measuring ion flux, electrophysiology and functional fluorescence analysis of cell membrane potential.
• Biochemical analysis method. In vitro studies to detect biological activity, such as enzyme activity evaluation.

Advantages

Our analysis service has relatively low cost and high-level information, which is also suitable for low-venom and high-throughput venom research. Creative Proteomics has many years of industry-leading knowledge and technology, and has the comprehensive ability to deal with complex venoms to ensure the quality of your data. With years of valuable experience, we are committed to helping our customers shorten the journey of venom-based drug discovery. For more details, please feel free to contact us.

Reference

• Prashanth J R, et al. Pharmacological screening technologies for venom peptide discovery. Neuropharmacology, 2017.