Papers of the Week

Venom-derived peptides display diverse biological and pharmacological activities that make them useful in a wide range of applications in medicine and pharmaceutical biotechnology. They have potential to treat various health problems such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, chronic pain and others. Despite the high potential for new drug development, a number of limitations have been reported for these compounds, including chemical instability, poor oral absorption, short half-life and toxicity, which complicate the process of converting venom peptides into therapeutic agents. One possibility to overcome these disadvantages is to encapsulate these molecules into nanocarriers. Up to date, some venom-derived peptides have been loaded into different types of nanomaterials and promising results have achieved. The present work reports examples of these peptides and the types of nanocarriers used. Based on this review, information can be taken to select the best conditions and materials to encapsulate biologically active venom-derived peptides for pharmaceutical application.