IMB researchers are using venom from many of our deadliest creatures to create medications that could lessen the impact of some of the world's deadliest diseases.
Animal venoms, which can incapacitate and even kill you, may seem like a strange place to hunt for new treatments for disease. But the venoms of creatures such as spiders, cone snails, scorpions, assassin bugs, centipedes and more, are complex chemical cocktails of molecules that affect our nervous system - exactly what is needed when developing treatments for neurological diseases and seeking to better understand how pain and other signals are transmitted.
28 August 2023
Creature features
Did you know venom – a toxic substance injected by one animal into another – has evolved around 100 times?
Known by the First Peoples of K’gari (Fraser Island) as the ‘long-toothed spider’, the Fraser Island funnel-web may hold the key to some astounding medical breakthroughs.
Venom research news
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New venom discovery from deadly cone snails
29 June 2023 -
Tarantula venom and PET scans bring hope to MND
21 June 2023 -
Ants inflict pain with neurotoxins
6 June 2023 -
Stinging tree injects promise of pain relief
4 May 2023 -
Bull ant evolves new way to target pain
3 March 2022 -
Healing hearts with venom
23 August 2021 -
Queensland’s own gympietides hold hope for new painkillers
23 August 2021 -
Repairing hearts with deadly spider venom
16 July 2021 -
The very venomous caterpillar
22 June 2021
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