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Scientists from the Biotechnology Institute (IBT), at the Morelos campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have created a highly efficient antivenom against snake bites from Mexico, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East .
Guillermo de la Rosa Hernández, a PhD graduate from IBT
, is the creator of the drug which traps neurotoxins from snake bites, a project that led him to receive the Rosenkranz Prize in Biotechnology 2018 , awarded by the Mexican Foundation for Health and Roche Laboratories .
In a statement, the maximum house of studies highlighted this development reminding that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) , snake bites are a problem that has been neglected in tropical and subtropical countries.
It is estimated that every year, 5.4 million bites are registered , which are the cause of between 81 thousand and 137 thousand deaths and of approximately three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities .
In America there are two families of poisonous snakes: vipers and elapids , such as corals and coralillos .
De la Rosa Hernández worked on the development of antibodies to the antivenom with Alejandro Alagón, a researcher from the Biotechnology Institute . For this work, the graduate of UNAM also worked with the laboratory of Gerardo Corzo Burguete , from the same university, who advised him to design antitoxins against snake venom.
In announcing this development, the graduate of UNAM said that there is a particular and highly lethal group of toxins produced by a wide variety of snakes such as the coralillo, the mambas, and taipans from Australia .
Snake venom is a mixture of many toxins, of which only some are a relevant cause of death. Therefore, antivenoms designed for snakes are not always effective when treating someone bitten by an elapid, so they usually use very high doses for it to work.
This is due to the fact that the venom of these snakes hits the victim's muscles, causing it to become paralyzed, the eyelids are closed, and the key muscles in his or her breathing are also disrupted, causing death by respiratory arrest.
Because of this, the group of specialists designed a molecule capable of trapping the toxins of the snake. Once the antivenom was synthesized, it was inoculated into horses -which purify it with their antibodies-; The first tests were conducted on mice and were all successful.
The designed molecule was highly effective, according to the results obtained when tested against the venom of the snake Micrurus surinamensis , which lives mainly in South America . It was also tested against African cobras and mambas, as well as snakes from the Middle East and Asia , especially the lethal Indian cobra , which causes the death of 50 thousand people each year .
The University already has the patent for the molecule, which will soon be transferred to interested laboratories. Unlike the commercial sera, which uses all the venom of the snake, the antivenom developed by de la Rosa Hernández only uses a single molecule, making it more effective.
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