BioTD: An Online Database of Biotoxins

Clinical Snapshot

Key Findings

• P Value: Not applicable — no hypothesis testing performed

• Effect Size: Not applicable — this is a database development study; no effect size is reported or calculable

• Primary Outcome: Development and public release of BioTD, described as the largest open-source biotoxin database, containing 14,607 data records including 8,185 activity records, covering 8,975 toxins from 5,220 references and patents across over 900 species

• Nnt Or Sensitivity: Not applicable — no clinical outcome, diagnostic accuracy, or survival data reported; database coverage metrics serve as the primary descriptive outputs

• Confidence Interval: Not reported — no statistical analyses with confidence intervals are presented in the abstract

Clinical Application

High feasibility for research use — the database is freely accessible online at http://biotoxin.net/ with full data download capability. No specialist software or institutional subscription is required. Integration into drug discovery pipelines will require additional computational expertise. Clinical translation from database-derived leads remains a lengthy, resource-intensive process. Australia has exceptional relevance to biotoxin research given its unique venomous fauna, including the world's most toxic elapid snakes (e.g., inland taipan, eastern brown snake), funnel-web spiders, cone snails, stonefish, and box jellyfish. BioTD may support Australian researchers at institutions such as the Australian Venom Research Unit (University of Melbourne) and the Venom Evolution Lab (University of Queensland). Clinically, Australian emergency physicians and toxicologists managing envenomation may benefit indirectly from improved biotoxin characterisation. The TGA has approved ziconotide (derived from cone snail conotoxin) for intractable pain — a precedent for Australian venom-derived drug development. The RACGP and ACEM have no direct guidelines referencing biotoxin databases, but the resource may inform future antivenom development and PBS listing applications for novel venom-derived therapeutics. No PBS or TGA regulatory implications arise directly from the database itself. Primarily applicable to preclinical researchers, computational chemists, toxinologists, and pharmaceutical scientists engaged in venom-derived drug discovery. Indirect clinical relevance for clinicians managing envenomation, developing antivenoms, or investigating novel analgesic, antihypertensive, or anticoagulant agents derived from biotoxins.

Abstract

Biotoxins, mainly produced by venomous animals, plants, and microorganisms, exhibit high physiological activity and unique effects such as lowering blood pressure and analgesia. A number of venom-derived drugs are already available on the market, with many more candidates currently undergoing clinical and laboratory studies. However, drug design resources related to biotoxins are insufficient, particularly because of a lack of accurate and extensive activity data. To fulfill this demand, we developed the Biotoxins Database (BioTD). BioTD is the largest open-source database for toxins, offering open access to 14,607 data records (8,185 activity records), covering 8,975 toxins sourced from 5,220 references and patents across over 900 species. The activity data in BioTD are categorized into five groups: Activity, Safety, Kinetics, Hemolysis, and other physiological indicators. Moreover, BioTD provides data on 1,532 mutants, refines the whole sequence and signal peptide sequences of toxins, and annotates disulfide-bond information. All of the data in the database can be downloaded for free. Given the importance of biotoxins and their associated data, this new database is expected to attract broad interest from diverse research fields in drug discovery. BioTD is freely accessible at http://biotoxin.net/.

References

1. 1.Wang, G., Wu, H., Liao, Y., Chen, Z., Zhou, Q., Wang, W., Liu, Y., Wang, Y., Wu, M., Xiang, R., Yu, Y., Zhou, X., Zhu, F., Liu, Z., & Hou, T. (2026). BioTD: An online database of biotoxins. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.6c00682