The researchers said that this development takes us one step closer to a universal antibody solution that can offer broad protection against a variety of snake venoms.
Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute and the Evolutionary Venomics Lab (EVL) at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a synthetic human antibody that can neutralise a potent neurotoxin produced by the Elapidae family of highly toxic snakes, which includes the cobra, king cobra, krait and black mamba.
The researchers say that this development takes us one step closer to a universal antibody solution that can offer broad protection against a variety of snake venoms.
Snakebites cause thousands of deaths every year, especially in India and sub-Saharan Africa. The current strategy for developing antivenoms involves injecting snake venom into equines like horses, ponies and mules, and collecting antibodies from their blood. But there are several problems.
“These animals get exposed to various bacteria and viruses during their lifetime,” explains Kartik Sunagar, Associate Professor at CES and joint corresponding author of the study. “As a result, antivenoms also include antibodies against microorganisms, which are therapeutically redundant. Research has shown that less than 10% of a vial of antivenom actually contains antibodies that are targeted towards snake venom toxins.”
The antibody developed by the team targets a conserved region found in the core of a major toxin called the three-finger toxin (3FTx) in the elapid venom. Although different species of elapids produce different 3FTxs, a handful of regions in the protein are similar. The team zeroed in on one such conserved region – a disulphide core. They designed a large library of artificial antibodies from humans, which were displayed on yeast cell surfaces. They then tested the antibodies’ ability to bind to 3FTxs from various elapid snakes around the world. After repeated screening, they narrowed down their choices to one antibody that could bind strongly to various 3FTxs. Among the 149 variants of 3FTxs in public repositories, this antibody could bind to 99.
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