Discovering venom-derived drug candidates using differential gene expression

Abstract

Venoms are a diverse and complex group of natural toxins that have been adapted to treat many types of human disease, but rigorous informatics approaches for discovering new therapeutic activities are scarce. We have designed and validated a new platform-named VenomSeq-to systematically generate putative associations between venoms and drugs/diseases via high-throughput transcriptomics and perturbational differential gene expression analysis. In this study, we describe the architecture of VenomSeq, and its evaluation using the crude venoms from 25 diverse animal species. By integrating comparisons to public repositories of differential expression, associations between regulatory networks and disease, and existing knowledge of venom activity, we provide a number of new therapeutic hypotheses linking venoms to human diseases supported by multiple layers of preliminary evidence. We are currently performing validation experiments in vitro to corroborate these findings.