Drug Discovery with Venoms

Drug Discovery with Venoms

Melusine Venom Libraries are your unique source for discovering new drug candidates. Atheris Laboratories, in partnership with Bachem, has the largest collection of venoms in the world designed for your drug discovery program.

Discovering new lead candidates for the next-generation of drugs is increasingly difficult. Using the wrong chemical library wastes time and money. Combinatorial chemistry libraries are often limited by preferred scaffolds and do not provide the molecular diversity you need to find a hit. Natural product libraries often have limited quantities of sample that run out just as you find an interesting lead.

An unexplored resource for new drugs

Venoms are a vast, unexplored source for new drug candidates. Melusine Venom Libraries contain thousands of compounds and peptides with novel structures and specific biological effects waiting to be discovered. Many of these peptides have never-before-identified structures and novel mechanisms of action.

Examples of targets for venoms include:

• Ion channels

• Cell receptors

• Metabolic & catabolic enzymes

• Selected cells, tissues, or entire organisms

As of 2011, there are 5 drugs based on venoms on the market (Table 1). Dozens of compounds are undergoing pre-clinical and clinical development into drugs for:

• Cancer

• Multiple sclerosis

• Stroke

• Allergies

• Diabetes

• Microbial (bacterial and fungal) infections

Table 1. Successful drug development starting from venoms. Drug names are registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers.

From Hits-to-Leads

The partnership of Atheris Laboratories and Bachem gives you a complete pipeline to turn your hit into a lead compound for your drug discovery program (Fig 1). Atheris Laboratories has 15 years of experience with venom handling, peptide sequencing, and structure identification, while Bachem has more than 40 years experience with the synthesis of peptides and peptidomimetics.

Fig 1. Hits-to-Leads 

Case Study: CONCO, Cone Snail Genome Project for Health

An example of drug discovery from venoms is CONCO, the Cone Snail Genome Project for Health. CONCO is a consortium of 20 partners in 13 countries. The consortium is being coordinated by Atheris Laboratories, led by President and CEO Reto Stocklin.

By combining genomic information and Atheris Laboratories venomics platform, CONCO has identified XEP-018 as its first lead candidate. XEP-018 is a peptide from cone snail that has unprecedented myorelaxant properties. XEP-018 is undergoing pre-clinical studies with plans to develop it as an anti-pain/anaesthetic myorelaxant drug.
 

CONCO recently published a paper on their analysis of cone snail venoms:

S. Kauferstein et al.
Venomic study on cone snails (Conus spp.) from South Africa.
Toxicon 57, 28-34 (2011)

Abstract

To learn more about CONCO, please visit the following websites:

http://www.conco.eu

http://www.toxinomics.org

Please send a quote for a Melusine Venom Library

Learn more about Melusine® Venom Libraries

Melusine® Venom Libraries

Melusine® Venom Libraries

Designed to Discover Tomorrow's Drugs