Harnessing Venoms

The French company Latoxan and the Swiss company Atheris Laboratories are working to create a "library" of venom fractions to help researchers determine which elements in a venom can best be used for medical advances. From an online article:

"As the Latoxan CEO, Harold de Pomyers, explained to DrugResearcher.com, venoms from plants and animals are a sophisticated mix of hundreds of peptides. All of these interact with the body and some could potentially be used as drugs to treat a huge variety of diseases.
"Drugs extracted or evolved from natural sources are nothing new to pharma companies. However, in the past it has been difficult for researchers to work with venoms - in the mix of molecules how could they know which one is exerting the positive effect? The new library should make that question much easier to answer, opening the door to hundreds of potential new drugs, said the companies." ...
"Despite the difficulties associated with working with venoms, their therapeutic potential is undisputable - there are many drugs both marketed and in development extracted or derived from toxins. The idea of using snake venom to treat heart disease may seem strange, yet that is exactly what Bristol-Myers Squibb did when they used the venom of a pit viper, Bothrops jararaca, to develop Capoten (captopril).
"Other drugs tied to venoms include Schering-Ploughs Integrilin (eptifibatide), to treat acute coronary syndrome. That drug is a platelet glycoprotein IIb/IIIa recptor inhibitor. However, it is not just heart disease exploiting venom. Other drugs from these sources are approved to treat cancer, stroke, Type II diabetes, pain relief and Alzheimer's, for example.
"Elan Pharmaceuticals has also tasted success with venoms. It developed Prialt (ziconotide), a non-opioid pain killer that blocks N-type calcium channels. The drug is a synthetic version of a peptide found in cone snails (also called sea snails)."