Jornal de Toxicologia Clínica
Acesso livre

Abstrato

Pharmacological Activities of Clinically Relevant Venoms and Specific Venom-Derived Drugs Approved for use in Medicine

Ojogbane Abutu

Venoms are generally aqueous solutions with cocktail of complex mixture of components mainly proteins and peptide toxins with pathophysiological functions. Venomous animals produced toxins in a bid to live favorably in a particular environment or in order to win among animals. As a consequence, animal envenoming’s, notably following bite or sting by snake, scorpion and spider precipitate life-threatening pathological conditions. Evidence suggests that evolutional events endowed each venom toxin with unique, thereby enabling the bioactive compound to act on molecular targets with high affinity, potency, specificity and selectivity. The aforementioned properties of venom toxins, which are often not found in natural or synthetic small molecules, make them valuable resource for development of pharmacological interventions. This review provides an overview of medically most important snake, scorpion and spider toxins as well as their molecular targets and biological activities. Specific venom-derived drugs that have been successfully translated into human therapeutics are discussed as well.