| dc.description.abstract | Antivenoms are fundamental in the therapy for snakebites. In elapid venoms, there are toxins,
e.g. short-chain α-neurotoxins, which are quite abundant, highly toxic, and consequently play
a major role in envenomation processes. The core problem is that such α-neurotoxins are
weakly immunogenic, and many current elapid antivenoms show low reactivity towards them.
We have previously developed a recombinant consensus short-chain α-neurotoxin (ScNtx)
based on sequences from the most lethal elapid venoms from America, Africa, Asia, and
Oceania. Here we report that an antivenom generated by immunizing horses with ScNtx can
successfully neutralize the lethality of pure recombinant and native short-chain α-neurotoxins,
as well as whole neurotoxic elapid venoms from diverse genera such as Micrurus,
Dendroaspis, Naja, Walterinnesia, Ophiophagus and Hydrophis. These results provide a proof-ofprinciple
for using recombinant proteins with rationally designed consensus sequences as
universal immunogens for developing next-generation antivenoms with higher effectiveness
and broader neutralizing capacity. | |
