{"id":23672,"date":"2018-08-23T13:00:41","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T19:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/?p=23672"},"modified":"2018-09-18T15:45:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T21:45:12","slug":"unam-develops-antivenom-against-snake-bites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/unam-develops-antivenom-against-snake-bites\/","title":{"rendered":"UNAM develops antivenom against snake bites"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Scientists from the Institute of Biotechnology (IBt) \u00ad- Morelos Campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) created an efficient antivenom against snake bites from Mexico, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Guillermo de la Rosa Hern\u00e1ndez, a PhD graduate from IBt, is the creator of this drug that traps neurotoxins of snakes<\/strong>, a work that led him to receive the Rosenkranz Prize in Biotechnology 2018, awarded by the Mexican Foundation for Health and Roche Laboratories.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the UNAM highlights this development as, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), snake bites are a serious problem neglected in tropical and subtropical countries<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It is estimated that every year, 5.4 million bites are registered, which are the cause of 81,000 to 137,000 deaths yearly<\/strong>; and approximately three times those figures represent the cases of amputations and other permanent disabilities. In America there are two families of poisonous snakes: vipers and elapids, such as corals<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

De la Rosa Hern\u00e1ndez worked on the development of antibodies for the antivenom with Alejandro Alag\u00f3n, researcher emeritus at IBt. For this work, De la Rosa joined the laboratory of Gerardo Corzo Burguete, from the same university, who advised him to design antitoxins against snake venom.<\/p>\n

When announcing this development, the De la Rosa said that there is a particular group of toxins in a wide variety of snakes: coral, mambas and taipans from Australia, which are highly lethal<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The venom of snakes is a mixture of many toxins, of which only some are deathly in humans. Therefore, antivenoms designed for snakes are not always effective when treating someone bitten by an elapid<\/strong>, so very high doses are used for them to work.<\/p>\n

This is because the venom of these snakes hits the victim’s muscles immobilizing them<\/strong>, including key breathing muscles, which generates a respiratory arrest.<\/p>\n

That is why the group of specialists designed a molecule capable of trapping the toxins of the snake, which was inoculated into horses to purify it with antibodies. Then, the researchers tested the molecule in mice, and it was successful<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The designed molecule was highly effective, according to the results obtained when tested against the venom of the snake Micrurus surinamensis<\/em>, which lives mainly in South America, the cobras and mambas of Africa, and snakes from the Middle East and Asia<\/strong>, especially for the Indian cobra (Naja naja), which causes the death of 50,000 people each year.<\/p>\n

The University already has the patent for the molecule, and is ready to be transferred to interested laboratories. De la Rosa said that unlike the commercial antivenoms, with use all the venom of the snake in its manufacture, the one they are developing involves the use of a single molecule to be more effective.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: <\/strong>DGCS UNAM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists from the Institute of Biotechnology (IBt) \u00ad- Morelos Campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) created an efficient antivenom against snake bites from Mexico, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Guillermo de la Rosa Hern\u00e1ndez, a PhD graduate from IBt, is the creator of this drug that traps neurotoxins of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":23870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-23672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualidad-en-la-salud","tag-casalud","cat-3-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23672"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23871,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23672\/revisions\/23871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}