Dr. Pierre Escoubas, President and CEO, VenomeTech, France
Tuesday, 9 December 2014 at 15:00 in the Large Operon, EMBL Heidelberg
Dr. Pierre Escoubas, President and CEO of VenomeTech, France
The art of domesticating venoms: from deadly toxins to tomorrow's drugs
Abstract
Animal venoms are large combinatorial libraries of biologically active peptides that encompass a wide variety of structures and pharmacological activities. They represent an immense and largely untapped resource of novel therapeutics and drug models. Exploration of the pharmacology and molecular diversity of venoms has resulted in the development of innovative drugs as attested by pasts successes in the field (Captopril, Ziconotide, Exenatide), but the full potential of venom peptides as therapeutics remains largely unexplored.
The obstacles of sample size and venom complexity are daunting as many venomous species are of microscopic size and venoms may be comprised of up to 1000 different peptides. Novel paradigms have to be implemented using today's cutting-edge technologies. Next-generation sequencing for transcriptomics, and mass spectrometry can permit venom deconvolution. Using the sequence information generated, recombinant and synthetic production of peptide libraries will lead to in vitro replication of venom molecular diversity, resulting in “synthetic venom libraries”. As the amount of potential information from the 173,000 venomous animal species is so massive, only large-scale parallel investigation approaches can unlock the full potential of the ca. 40 million venom peptides, and bypass the issues relating to working with natural products.
As more large-scale, visionary programs are implemented, venom research will undoubtedly result in the discovery of some of tomorrow's drugs from the ca 40 million venom peptides, but will also provide molecular tools for the dissection of receptor structure and function.
Biography
Dr. Pierre Escoubas is President and CEO of VenomeTech, a Biotech startup company located in the Sophia-Antipolis French research cluster.
Dr. Escoubas obtained his PhD in Chemical Entomology at University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris) in 1988, and worked as a post-doctoral associate at the University of Georgia (USA) before moving to Japan in 1989 as a research associate for the Japan Research and Development Corporation. In 1993, he joined the Suntory Institute for Bioorganic Research (SUNBOR) in Osaka to work on peptide toxins from animal venoms. He returned to France in 1998 to join the group of Prof. M. Lazdunski at the CNRS Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology in Sophia Antipolis, and as an Associate Professor at the University of Paris and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis until 2009.
He has also received business and entrepreneurship education at HEC Paris (Challenge+) and EM Lyon business schools.
He founded VenomeTech in 2009 and has since been leading the company towards the development of innovative drugs from animal venom peptides. He has also been the recipient of several large grants and has implemented large-scale exploratory projects for the study of animal venoms.
Dr. Escoubas' research interests include the discovery of novel peptide toxins from various venomous animals, biological mass spectrometry, peptide engineering and folding, ion channel molecular pharmacology, and the development of novel peptide therapeutics. He has organized symposia, workshops, training courses and lectures on natural products, peptide biochemistry and biological mass spectrometry. Dr. Escoubas has authored ca. 80 research papers, and holds 8 patents.