Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Hospital Clínic-University of Barcelona, 08036 Barcelona, Spain.
Université Paris Cité, CNRS, INSERM, UTCBS, F-75006 Paris, France.
Toxins (Basel). 2022 Jun 18;14(6):418. doi: 10.3390/toxins14060418.
Snakebite envenomation is a neglected tropical disease that causes over 100,000 deaths each year. The only effective treatment consists of antivenoms derived from animal sera, but these have been deemed with highly variable potency and are usually inaccessible and too costly for victims. The production of antivenoms by venom-independent techniques, such as the immunization with multi-epitope constructs, could circumvent those drawbacks. Herein, we present a knowledge-based pipeline to prioritize potential epitopes of therapeutic relevance from toxins of medically important snakes in West Sub-Saharan Africa. It is mainly based on sequence conservation and protein structural features. The ultimately selected 41 epitopes originate from 11 out of 16 snake species considered of highest medical importance in the region and 3 out of 10 of those considered as secondary medical importance. , responsible for the highest casualties in the area, would be covered by 12 different epitopes. Remarkably, this pipeline is versatile and customizable for the analysis of snake venom sequences from any other region of the world.
蛇伤是一种被忽视的热带病，每年导致超过 10 万人死亡。唯一有效的治疗方法是使用从动物血清中提取的抗蛇毒血清，但这些血清的效力差异很大，而且通常对受害者来说无法获得或过于昂贵。通过与毒液无关的技术生产抗蛇毒血清，如使用多表位构建物进行免疫，可以避免这些缺点。在这里，我们提出了一个基于知识的管道，用于从西非次撒哈拉地区具有重要医学意义的蛇类毒素中优先选择具有治疗相关性的潜在表位。它主要基于序列保守性和蛋白质结构特征。最终选择的 41 个表位来自该地区被认为具有最高医学重要性的 16 种蛇中的 11 种，以及被认为具有次要医学重要性的 10 种中的 3 种。在该地区造成最高伤亡的毒蛇将有 12 种不同的表位覆盖。值得注意的是，该管道具有通用性和可定制性，可用于分析来自世界任何其他地区的蛇毒序列。
