On Mar. 2, 2020, Ophirex, a public-benefit biotechnology company working to improve outcomes for global victims of snakebite, announced that it has received a $2.5 million award from the Wellcome Trust’s £80 million (approximately $100 million) commitment to improve treatment of snakebite. The award will fund manufacturing of oral and IV varespladib, Ophirex’s lead drug candidate, for use in Ophirex’s upcoming, potentially pivotal clinical trial studies.

Ophirex is developing varespladib as a first-in-class, toxin-targeting antidote for snakebite, with the ultimate goal of safe and rapid administration to snakebite victims in the out-of-hospital setting where — without immediate access to antivenom — most snakebite deaths occur. By inhibiting the progression of a key venom component called “sPLA2,” varespladib could mitigate many of the most common, immediately life-threatening effects of snakebite envenoming. In preclinical studies, the drug candidate has shown potential to act against this most lethal component of snake venoms, across a broad spectrum of geographically diverse snake species.

In conjunction with the Wellcome award, Ophirex and Wellcome have also established a group that will monitor developments in the field of snakebite treatment and identify opportunities involving Ophirex’s and other new technologies in a collaborative approach toward filling unmet needs in the field of snakebite envenoming.

Wellcome’s groundbreaking £80 million program, announced in May of 2019, focuses on improving snakebite treatments and access to them and signifies important recognition of the enormous, largely unaddressed suffering of snakebite victims in often poor, rural areas of Africa, Asia and South America. The World Health Organization (WHO) reinstated snakebite envenoming to its list of neglected tropical diseases in 2017 and, more recently, has outlined strategies to reduce the death and disability toll from snakebite — currently approximately 500,000 people per year — by half by 2030. In early 2019, the WHO Snakebite Envenoming Working Group specifically identified Ophirex’s drug as a priority for accelerated study.

Ophirex is a public benefit corporation working to develop safe, effective, and accessible initial treatment for snakebite envenoming, which kills or disables at least half a million people worldwide annually, mostly in rural, impoverished areas.