In the 1960s the Brazilian pharmacologist Sergio Ferreira described bradykinin-potentiating factors in the venom of the lancehead Bothrops jararaca. Follow-up work established that these peptides inhibited angiotensin-converting enzyme, a step in the hormonal cascade that raises blood pressure. Chemists at Squibb used the peptide structure as a starting point and produced captopril, approved in 1981.
Captopril was the first ACE inhibitor and the ancestor of a widely used drug class for hypertension and heart failure. It is one of the clearest cases of a venom component becoming a mainstream medicine, alongside anticoagulants and diagnostic reagents derived from other snakes.
The medical story sits oddly beside the field one. Lanceheads of the genus Bothrops account for the majority of snakebites in much of South America, largely because they thrive in cleared and cultivated land where people work. The name fer-de-lance is applied loosely across several Bothrops species, which muddles both bite statistics and antivenom matching.