News

Following on from our inclusion in Sky News report on the need for new antibiotics we thought we'd show you some of our venom in action. This plate was dosed with one of our snake venoms specifically chosen by our scientists. The bacteria growing in a lawn are Staphylococcus albus which are clearly killed in a dose responsive matter by the venom. Work carried out at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Venomtech is pleased to share with you our success in finding new venom peptides that kill bacteria in potentially novel ways. These are all found in our antibacterial T-VDA. This is currently a leading story on Sky News blueprint-to-tackle-scourge-of-drug-resistance showing a small snap shot of what we do and why it's important.

We are fighting hard to bring these important tools needed to the people that need them to help mitigate the perceived threat of the antibiotic apocalypse.

The tools you need to find novel mechanisms to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria are right here with a full hit to lead support service to get them to the patient ASAP.

Contact us for more information.

We are excited to announce we are six years old. During those six years we have moved through three locations each time getting bigger and better. Now located in the amazing Discovery Park Community. We have shipped venoms to customers far and wide (USA, Europe, India and Australia). But most importantly we have facilitated work in a wide range of drug discovery programmes including new antibiotics, GPCR ligands, Pain therapeutics and Cancer biology. We have also gained a deep understanding of the venoms and the venomous animals (more publications to come). Looking forward we expect to further grow into the cosmetics and personal care fields as well as our global reach in pharmaceutical research.

As Venomtech approach our sixth birthday we are excited to report a new publication demonstrating the retinal protective effect of Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria nigriventor) venom. A multidisciplinary team from Brazil have publish in Toxins showing a NPQ type Calcium channel blocker they call PhTx3-4 reduces NMDA induced retial injury. This model of excitotoxicity retinopathy is though to model serveral leading causes of blindness such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, retinal vascular occlusion, optic nerve neuropathy, and retinopathy of prematurity.

Full paper here http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/8/3/70

Australia has many venomous animals that are a significant danger to humans. In the battle to save human life from unfortunate encounters with venomous animals, specific antivenom is needed. In order to do this, venom must be collected from the animals responsible and depending on the species and size this can be a very difficult process. The Syndney Funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus) is one such animal. The unique thing with A. robustus is that the venom in the mature male spider contains a toxin not found in the females, Delta Atracotoxin-Ar1. This toxin potently blocks primate voltage gated sodium channels with a much greater afinity than to other mamalian channels, hence the danger to humans. Therefore for successful antivenom production the mature males must be collected annually as they only have a short life once matured. Thus the discovery of the largest male A. robustus is a significant boost to the antivenom project because larger spiders have larger venom glands.

See BBC global news coverage here video