Venomtech enters the US market

Venomtech – the UK’s only commercial venom supplier – has announced a US distribution agreement with Mayflower Bioscience, a distributor of unique life science research products. Under the agreement, Mayflower Bioscience will distribute Venomtech’s Targeted Venom Discovery Array (T-VDA) products – designed to maximise discovery of new drug leads and tools – in North American and Canada. “A variety of venoms have shown great utility in disease areas such as pain, cancer, antimicrobials, immunology, growth factors and haematology,” said Steve Trim, founder of Venomtech. “Scientific literature is rapidly growing around the use of venom components as novel leads and therapeutics for targets such as ion channels, enzymes, GPCRs and many others. We have therefore designed our libraries for finding new hits to these targets and also offer a full hit-to-lead development service based on our extensive drug discovery and venom experience.” Venoms from tarantulas, scorpions and snakes are rich sources of new drug discovery tools; venom peptides blocking ion channels and GPCRs in disease areas such as pain, antibiotics and cardiovascular disease are the next generation of therapeutics. Venomtech’s targeted arrays contain pure venom fractions from 12, 24, 48 or 96 species optimised for identification of novel tools. Each contains characterised venoms active in specific pathways to act as positive controls, with the other fractions specially selected by the company’s drug discovery scientist to maximise novel hit potential.