A promising snakebite treatment seemed ready for prime time. Then, it backfired

A single bite from the terciopelo ( Bothrops asper ), a viper that lives in Central America and northern South America, is responsible for hundreds of fatalities each year. Many more are maimed by the venom’s muscle-destroying toxins, as existing treatments are largely ineffective at preventing tissue death. Now, researchers report that a once-promising new drug, an antibody that counteracts a pernicious toxin in the viper’s venom, has failed in animal trials. But the way that it failed—worsening the toxin’s damage in mice and eventually killing the animals instead of protecting them—may reveal new aspects of antibody biochemistry and down the road help save victims of snakebites and other toxins, scientists report today in Nature Communications . “Anything can happen in medicine and nature,” says microbiologist Siu-Kei Chow with the MultiCare Health System in Tacoma, Washington, who was not involved in the work. “It’s definitely an interesting phenomenon … [and] brings new insights for antibody development.” Christoffer Sørensen, an antibody discovery scientist, spent years working on the new drug while a graduate student at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). With his adviser, toxinologist and bioengineer Andreas Laustsen-Kiel, he developed an antibody that could seize onto a toxin in the snake’s venom called myotoxin II and neutralize it. A suite of laboratory and animal tests showed that the antibod...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research