A similar venom-based analgesic that actually became a drug is Ziconotide [0], a selective calcium channel blocker contained in a certain type of cone snail ven

A similar venom-based analgesic that actually became a drug is Ziconotide [0], a selective calcium channel blocker contained in a certain type of cone snail venom (the actual drug has some minor modifications for stability but the structure was already perfect re: activity). Unfortunately as a peptide it's not orally active and has to be administered directly into cerebrospinal fluid. I only know about it because the person who discovered it gave a wonderful talk at my grad school. Apparently venomous sea snails produce incredibly diverse mixtures of incredibly receptor-selective peptides. They used a cheap phenotypic screen in which snails were purchased from fishermen, venom fractionated by HPLC, individual fractions injected into mice, behaviors were characterized and interesting ones flagged for further study. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziconotide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziconotide