Vetox Lab – Venom Research and Toxicology Laboratory

Venom proteome is also known as “venomics” to the toxinologist, offers great potential for a clear understanding of the pathogenesis of envenomation as well as drug discovery and improvement of antivenom production. 

Over decades, antivenom therapy remains the only established effective treatment for snakebite envenomation. The quality of antivenom, however, varies widely between products. This is of great concern for countries that rely on imported antivenom produced in other countries, as the efficacy of the imported antivenom against local snake venoms is often questionable but not rigorously assessed. Robust and rigorous preclinical assessment of antivenom is indispensable to ensure that only appropriate, effective and safe antivenom would be used for life-saving.

The diversity in toxin sequences and isoforms as well as variations in toxin abundance could not be ascertained due to the limited public snake venom toxin database. To remedy the current lack of venom gland transcriptomic data, we takes the challenge venturing into the transcriptomics study using next-generation sequencing for a deeper insight into the toxin diversity of various snake species.