Recently, researchers from six institutions including the University of Copenhagen and the National Aquarium of Denmark (Den Blå Planet) have successfully identified the exact composition of sea snake venom, which makes the future development of synthetic antivenoms more realistic.
At present, sea snake anitvenom costs nearly USD 2000, which is obviously too expensive. The new findings referred to above could result in a future production of synthetic antivenoms for as little as USD 10-100.
In many tropical and subtropical countries, Venomous snakebites becomes a major health concern. There are more than 10 million bites each year. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, an estimated one million snakebites occur annually and about half of them need treatment, many result in amputations and a significant amount result in deaths.
When people in poor countries are bitten, including working fishermen and children playing in the ocean, they are more likely to be left to die because it is extremely expensive to save them, not because they cannot be saved. More lives can be saved if there are more inexpensive antivenoms produced.
Antivenoms are still produced by traditional animal immunization procedures, which has a number of drawbacks, such as allergic reactions, which in the worst instances end in death. Yet technological advances within biopharmaceuticals and medicinal chemistry could pave the way for rational drug design approaches to snake toxins. This could eliminate the use of animals and bring forward more effective therapies for snakebite envenoming.
Hope more people can benefit from the new findings.
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