• Question: Have you made any antivenoms, if so how many?

    Asked by Beth.Wa to Adam on 12 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Adam Hargreaves

      Adam Hargreaves answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      Hi Beth.Wa,
      I haven’t, my project is right at the beginning of that process, so there’s a long way to go yet. Unfortunately for any medicines there needs to be the initial development phase where you find the compound/drug that does the thing you want, and then LOTS of testing to make sure that it is safe to be used on humans. In some cases this 2nd part can take 10 years or more, so there’s a real bottleneck in terms of finding a treatment that can be really helpful, and it being approved for use in humans.
      At the moment I know what venom inhibitors I want to focus on, I just need to test them to make sure they work!

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