Abstract
Background and Motivation
Snakebite envenoming (SBE)is one of the deadliest Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD ) that causes over 63,000 deaths (95% UI 38,900–78,600) and 2.9 Million YLLs (1.8 million–3.7 million) annually(Roberts et al., 2022). SBE is a especially a public health menace among poor rural agricultural communities throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America and other tropical regions (Hamza et al., 2021). Antivenom administration is the mainstay treatment of SBE and they are either monovalent in case the species of the biting snake is know or polyvalent in case the biting snake species is not known. This presents challenges in the diagnosis of the offending snake, and also the availability and effectiveness of these antivenoms against African snake species has been questioned due to the fact that they are developed using venom from snakes of other regions including India(Dalhat et al., 2023). Snakes vary genetically by regions and therefore antivenom that work on one region may not work in another region even if the snakes appear similar. This means therefore there is need to develop next generation antivenom that suits the needs of Sub-Saharan Africa considering the genetic variation in snakes in this region (Innocent et al., 2024).
Diagnostics
Diagnostics – I hope to develop a genetic circuit that can detect and accurately report the biting snake species using the DNA left on the victims bitemarks. In order to do this, I suggest a toehold switch that intakes the DNA from the Snake and report the species responsible. This will help a great deal in helping healthcare providers in deciding quickly what antivenom to administer in order to save the lives of the victims since a SBE is a serious medical emergency and time is essential factor.
Therapeutics - Develop a recombinant synthetic antivenom platform using synthetic biology to produce neutralizing antibodies or peptides that can counteract venom toxins in a scalable, cost-effective, and accessible manner. I plan to use either yeast surface display or phage display to identify small synthetic peptides that bind and neutralize venom. I will get a panel of the venom toxin that common in all snakes of medical importance nin Africa and use that as a reference. some of these venom toxins include
b. Three finger toxin
Vaccines - Using the principles of Synthetic Biology, I am hoping to Engineer virus-like particles (VLPs) displaying venom protein epitopes to mimic real venom exposure. VLPs can be engineered to present multiple venom toxins on their surface like PLA2 and 3FTn at the same time and induce an immune repsonse and generating antibodies agaisnt those toxins, so that incase the person is bitten by a snake, the immune system will have been primed to the toxins.
current antivenom prodcution
