The venom of a single spider can contain up to 3,000 components. These can be used to develop promising drug candidates to treat diseases. A team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME and the Justus Liebig University in Gießen shows how they get the venom from small and large spiders and why spider venom is considered a beacon of hope in the fight against diseases of the central nervous system.
#Fraunhofer #Medicine #Health #Therapeutics #SpiderVenom #Spiders #Research #ActiveAgent #Diseases
Press release from January 2022: s.fhg.de/spinn...
00:23 - A passion for spiders
00:43 - The potential of spider venom
01:54 - Venom extraction from large spiders
02:26 - Wasp spiders in the focus of research
03:11 - Venom extraction from small spiders
03:50 - Spider venom as a promising solution for therapeutics
_____A passion for spiders
"To be honest, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in creepy crawlies, both exotic and native. Even as a small child, I spent basically all my free time in the woods looking for spiders and insects. The venomous ones always interested me the most.” Dr. Tim Lüddecke
_____The potential of spider venom
“Spider venom has tremendous potential for research and medicine. After all, spiders’ toxins primarily act on the central nervous system - with a high level of selectivity and potency. This means that spider venoms make an incredibly powerful base for the development of drugs to target diseases in the central nervous system.” Dr. Tim Lüddecke
“In light of these factors, it’s likely that we will find drugs that can interact with the nervous system in some way, and so may be capable of curing nervous disorders as well. You never know what you will find, but you can increase the probability by screening for a wide range of factors. For instance, we screen to see whether the venom can treat sepsis, whether it has any antibiotic properties or components that can fight cancer cells, or whether it can be used for pain relief. So that’s a broad range, and our hope is that one of the components will have a specific effect in a certain segment.” Prof. Dr. Andreas Vilcinskas
_____Venom extraction from large spiders
“Extracting venom from large spiders is never a problem. We use CO2 to sedate the animal a little bit, then grip it at the front of its body and let it bite through a membrane. Then, we stimulate the muscles of the venom glands using small electric shocks, which releases the venom and allows us to collect it easily. Next, we break down the venom in the lab using chromatography and then study the mechanisms and structures of the individual components.” Dr. Tim Lüddecke
_____Wasp spiders in the focus of research
“We were able to learn a lot from wasp spider venom - it was quite eye-opening. It breaks with a lot of the paradigms I’ve come across in the literature, because in contrast to other spiders, wasp spider venom doesn’t just consist of very small peptides; it’s also very rich in large components, which is extremely unusual. At the same time, we were also able to find a number of completely unknown classes of toxins with similar structures to insect neuropeptides, that we hope may also be able to act on the central nervous system.” Dr. Tim Lüddecke
_____Venom extraction from small spiders
So instead of extracting the venom, we remove the venom glands from the animals, sequence the transcriptome and look at the activated genes in the venom gland. Then, we use bioinformatic methods to derive the venom composition from this sequence data, identify any particularly exciting venom components and use the gene sequence to incorporate them into bacteria. Then, the bacteria will produce the components in the lab.” Dr. Tim Lüddecke
_____Spider venom as a promising solution for therapeutics
“We are convinced that some amazing active agents can be found here. We just need to find out how exactly we can discover them, track them down and, finally, make a valuable drug out of them. These are the questions we have dedicated ourselves to.” Prof. Dr. Andreas Vilcinskas
“So far we have only studied the venom from a small fraction of spider species. Considering how many very promising leads we’ve already found in just that small sample, I am personally very optimistic that we will find other, very powerful candidates in the near future, and that these will make it onto the market.” Dr. Tim Lüddecke
21 окт 2024
