REVOLUTIONIZING ANTIVENOM PRODUCTION FOR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
AFRICAN SNAKEBITE AID PROJECT

The problem lies in the diversity of snake species and the enormous variation in both the venoms themselves and the amounts different species can inject when they bite.

While a small carpet viper may inject only 10-20mg of venom, large cobras, adders and mambas are capable of injecting more than 300mg. Antivenom design errors have seen products developed in such a way that while 1-2 vials may be sufficient for carpet viper bites, victims bitten by mambas and cobras may require dozens of vials. Since antivenoms are often in poor supply, and costly, these victims often receive far less than needed and suffer poor outcomes.

We hear from rural doctors in East Africa quite often. Even if there’s available antivenom, they feel helpless when treating patients bitten by mambas and cobras, because they rarely have enough antivenom on hand to properly treat even one patient. Even if they had stock, some aren’t skilled or knowledgeable about administering antivenon and patients likely won’t be able to afford the cost.

GSI wants to revolutionize the way we design and manufacture antivenoms. We want to share the technology with existing manufacturers to enable them to rapidly improve current products and get products into use for the treatment of snakebites throughout sub-Saharan Africa to benefit as many victims as possible. The same technology may also improve the effectiveness, safety, and reach of antivenoms in other areas of the world facing similar issues.

We partnered with leading experts and challenged them to develop new antivenom production technologies to improve the effectiveness of existing products, particularly against the venoms of cobras and mambas through incorporation of scientifically validated process steps to increase antibody titres in source plasma, improve recovery of specific toxin-neutralizing antibodies during production, and enable manufacturers to reimagine how their antivenoms are formulated for practical use in harsh climates and basic health care delivery environments.

GSI partners at the Institute of Biomedicine in Valencia, Spain have applied over 40 years of experience to mapping the venom compositions of Africa’s most medically important snakes throughout the continent and determining which populations of each species are most important to antivenom production. This knowledge has enabled them to design optimal mixtures of toxins that can be used to produce antivenoms with 10-15 times the potency of existing products, not by making new antivenoms, but by enabling manufacturers to improve the production of specific toxin-neutralizing antibodies and eliminate non-specific antibodies that have no role in treating envenoming.

To improve current antivenoms even further, we brought in experts a Seattle-based organization developing cutting edge solutions to real-world challenges. GSI tasked them with creating new approaches to increase the yield of antibodies from donor plasma and to explore how emerging drug manufacturing technologies can be harnessed to best formulate antivenoms for use in rural Africa.

Over the next two years, we hope to complete this work and produce the first pilot batch lots of improved antivenoms for final laboratory evaluation before making the products available for clinical trials to prove their safety and effectiveness under real-world conditions in sub-Saharan Africa.