Ophirex

Ophirex, Inc., a Public Benefit Corp. focused on treatments for acute, life-threatening illnesses, is modernizing the treatment of snakebite victims by developing an affordable, accessible, oral treatment for immediate use anywhere a snake’s bite occurs.

Approximately 80% of the world’s population lives in close proximity to at least one venomous snake species and more than 500,000 people are killed or maimed by snakes each year worldwide.[1][2] Field treatments could help save hundreds of thousands of lives and limbs annually and provide enormous savings in healthcare costs.[2][3]

Ophirex is developing a “time of bite” oral snakebite treatment that blocks the most commonly lethal component of snake venom—present in 95% of the world’s venomous snakes.[4] This antidote—now in human clinical trials—can be administered immediately in the field or in the hospital to effectively stop the venom’s devastating assault.[5][6][7]

1. Vulnerability to snakebite envenoming: a global mapping of hotspots. www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31224-8/fulltext
2. Strategy for a globally coordinated response to a priority neglected tropical disease: Snakebite envenoming. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0007059
3. Snakebite: An Exploratory Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Adjunct Treatment Strategies. www.ajtmh.org/view/journals/tpmd/99/2/article-p404.xml
4. A Review and Database of Snake Venom Proteomes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28927001/
5. Varespladib (LY315920) Appears to Be a Potent, Broad-Spectrum, Inhibitor of Snake Venom Phospholipase A2 and a Possible Pre-Referral Treatment for Envenomation. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27571102/
6. Varespladib (LY315920) and Methyl Varespladib (LY333013) Abrogate or Delay Lethality Induced by Presynaptically Acting Neurotoxic Snake Venoms. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7076770/
7. Broad-spectrum Rapid Antidote: Varespladib Oral for Snakebite (BRAVO).
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04996264