drug design and snake venom?

[lbeste12]

anyone know anything about drug design and venom?

1. What factors do you have to consider when designing a drug?
2. Design a drug that will inhibit the effect of venom? or How does a drug inhibit venom?

for 1 i have:
Make sure that the drug does not interfere with other biochemical processes e.g. other enzymes


I have a rough idea about 2, but i could be wrong.

[Greatness]

my knowledge is a bit rusty regarding rationale drug design for bio but ill give it a shot.

1) Cost, will it have any adverse affects, how it will react to the environments that it is exposed to etc
2) Well you would want the drug to inhibit the enzyme that assists in producing the venom. So you would design a drug that mirrors that specific enzymes structure.

[scocliffe09]

anyone know anything about drug design and venom?

1. What factors do you have to consider when designing a drug?
2. Design a drug that will inhibit the effect of venom? or How does a drug inhibit venom?

for 1 i have:
Make sure that the drug does not interfere with other biochemical processes e.g. other enzymes


I have a rough idea about 2, but i could be wrong.

Rational Drug design is really important for unit 3 - basically you design chemical molecules which are complementary in shape (and charge) to the receptor you want it to bind to, so that it either inhibits or activates a metabolic pathway.
Other stuff you need to consider includes side-effects of the drug, interactions with other drugs, dosage of drug required (which is affected by absorption rate/efficiency). Also important to consider method of drug delivery / administration.

2. Often venom can inhibit neurotransmitter action - this leaves two basic options for how to deal with the venom: 1. produce a molecule that is complementary to the venom molecule, inactivating the venom or 2. produce a molecule which competes with the venom to try to 'bump' it out of the neurotransmitter receptors (but this isn't a great option, as the neurotransmitter itself now has another competitor).

[shinny]

my knowledge is a bit rusty regarding rationale drug design for bio but ill give it a shot.

1) Cost, will it have any adverse affects, how it will react to the environments that it is exposed to etc
2) Well you would want the drug to inhibit the enzyme that assists in producing the venom. So you would design a drug that mirrors that specific enzymes structure.

Re: 2, why not just make a drug which inhibits the venom itself? In reality, what they do is inject the pure venom into horses and then isolate the antibody that the horses make, then purify the antibody from their blood and inject it into people when needed. Problems with this drug is that because it's from horses, the antibody taken from the horses is itself a foreign material and can lead to allergic reactions - so called 'serum sickness'. But basically, yeh, major consideration would be side effects and adverse effects from the drug. In addition to the others swarley's given, others would be route of administration (as a general principle, protein-based drugs such as antibodies cannot be taken orally because the stomach will digest the protein), interactions with other drugs, the dosage required etc.

EDIT: Beaten by scocliffe09