Conotoxin venom peptide therapeutics.

Venom peptides offer enormous opportunity for the discovery of peptide drug leads. This review focusses on the potential of cone snails that have developed arrays of small peptides as part of highly evolved venoms used for prey capture and defence. Many of these peptides selectively modulate ion channels and transporters, making them a valuable source of new ligands for studying the role these targets play in normal and disease physiology. A number of these conopeptides reduce pain in animals models and several are now in preclinical and clinical development for the treatment of severe pain often associated with diseases such as cancer.