Harnessing snake venom cardiotoxins for antimicrobial peptide discovery
Bruno Mendes, José R Almeida, Valeria Castelletto, Ian W Hamley, Glyn Barrett · 2026
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Description
Bruno Mendes and co-authors mined cobra venom in 2026 for new antibacterial peptides. Cardiotoxins are membrane-punching proteins in cobra venom, natural templates for drugs that tear bacterial walls. The team ran two computer strategies over toxin sequences: one hunting hidden antimicrobial stretches, one building peptides from a shared toxin scaffold. Prediction tools then ranked the candidates.
Fourteen peptides went to the bench. Most showed weak activity, and one parent peptide, CTX-p5, beat all its trimmed or modified children. Microscopy and flow tests showed it ruptures bacterial membranes. It hit both major bacterial classes. The authors are candid about the limits: current prediction tools picked poorly overall. Better toxin-mining workflows are needed, they say, before venom libraries yield drugs efficiently. The study maps both the promise and the gap.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Bruno Mendes, José R Almeida, Valeria Castelletto, Ian W Hamley, Glyn Barrett |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 59 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |