Table 2.

Cost-benefit analysis between in vivo and in vitro assays.

	In Vivo Assay	In Vitro Assays
	Lethal Dose 50%	Proteolytic Activity	RP-HPLC *
Total execution time	~48 h	10 min	70 min
Animals required	50 mice/batch	not required	not required
Amount of venom	~1.5–2.0 mg/batch/test	1.5 µg	30 µg
Result variability	<9%	<15%	<10%

* Reverse phase chromatography.