Universal antivenom may lie in camel antibodies

CAMEL antibodies could be the key to creating a universal antivenom for snakebites, British scientists have said.

Snakebite remains one of the world’s largest “hidden health crises”, killing between 81,000 and 138,000 people a year. It is estimated that a further 400,000 suffer life-changing injuries, including amputations, sight loss and terrible open ulcers that never heal.

Current antivenoms protect against only a handful of the 250 poisonous snakes, and there are no common production, safety or efficacy standards; in Africa up to 90 per cent of antivenoms are ineffective. They often have to be administered in huge doses at hospitals or clinics with resuscitation facilities, as severe reactions are so common.

A team of scientists at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s Centre for Snakebite Research and Interventions is working to change this, part-funded by the Wellcome Trust.

According to Prof Robert Harrison, outgoing head of the unit, camel antibodies could be key to developing a universal antivenom which is appropriate for low resource settings, and capable of neutralising the toxins of all the predominant snakes in Africa and Asia.

“Like most antivenoms, antibody treatments require a cold chain, and that’s a barrier to getting these therapies to communities where they’re needed,” Prof Harrison told The Telegraph. “We think we might have an answer to that: camel antibodies. They have this extraordinary ability to be non-susceptible to heat, so you can store them at room temperature.”