Natural venoms are complex mixtures comprising many toxins, peptides and otherwise, which act in concert to efficiently break apart the highly robust homeostatic systems of prey organisms. On the other hand, the organism under attack actively antagonizes each step of the envenomation phenomenon, which displays a complex kinetics involving major changes at molecular, cell and tissue levels. The challenges for investigators that study venoms and envenomation comprehend two daunting hurdles. First, natural venoms contain a variety of toxins and other biologically active substances, which must be analyzed aiming to isolate and chemically characterize their molecular components. Second, venoms trigger a systemic response that progresses from local cells to tissues up to the whole organism, i.e., the dynamics of envenomation, whose molecular underlying mechanisms must be uncovered. Both challenging sides must be approached in parallel and its initial phase is necessarily exploratory and descriptive. However, success in this initial phase very likely will progress to a phase of discovery of novel toxins and their respective molecular metabolic targets, which are inserted in major regulatory networks. At this advanced phase, the investigation is dominated by hypothesis-driven research. This schematic rationale is valid for all venoms and toxins irrespective of the enormous biological diversity.

In our Center, we count with a team of diversified experts that share a range of complementary skills. This multiplicity of expertise allowed us to contemplate, within the focal topic 1, “toxin response”, still poorly known venoms and completely characterized toxins; in addition, the topic 2 is a natural extension of the 1, i.e., “venom genomic evolution”. On the other hand, the host organism reacts to envenomation triggering a highly complex phenomenon, namely, the “immune response”, however, within this vast subject our topic 3 focus on a classical theme “antibodies”. Furthermore, still within the host response, topic 4 focus on a compounded complex phenomenon “inflammation, pain and genome stability”. Finally, topic 5 deals with the bioinformatics and computational biology required to focus on “static maps of molecular signaling networks and computational dynamical models of these same networks”.

At a glance, this scenario might look like an unmanageable scientific investigation. But, before jumping to conclusions we assure the reader that in all focal topics of investigation we deal with manageable projects comprising introduction, rationale, defined objectives and concluding results, which follow strict methodological pipelines. This statement is supported by the progress we made in last two years, whose main results are highlighted in the next paragraphs.