Lecture: Animal Venoms - Friend or Foe?

Lecture: Animal Venoms - Friend or Foe?
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This is a past event

This lecture will be delivered by Dr Wael Houssen and Dr Soumya Palliyil and followed by a reception.

Dr Wael Houssen is a chemical biologist at University of Aberdeen’s Institute of Medical Sciences whose part of his research interest is to identify and study the therapeutic potential of animal venoms. In his talk, he will describe his research efforts to discover new scorpion venom peptides with anti-corona virus activity. He uses novel chemoenzymatic approaches to produce or modify these compounds in quantities sufficient for biological testing. for more details on this work, please watch our video.

Dr Soumya Palliyil is the head of Scottish Biologics Facility, University of Aberdeen where she leads several translational research projects generating antibody assets and progressing them through to preclinical testing and prototype diagnostic test development. In this seminar Dr Palliyil will present her work developing an affordable ‘yes or no’ snake venom detection kit (SVDK) to establish envenomation in bite victims in rural economies. Such a test will enable the clinicians to decide the need for an ‘expensive’ antivenom administration and tackling a critical unmet diagnostic need in tropical and subtropical regions including India and Africa. 

Venue
Opportunity North East Biohub
Contact

m.jaspars@abdn.ac.uk