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AUSSIE SNAKES KEY TO STEMMING GUNSHOT BLEEDING
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A Brisbane scientist is developing a drug to
control bleeding, particularly after major trauma such as gunshot and following surgery.
The key to this drug is snake venom.
Australia is well placed for such drug development because it is home to "potentially the most lethal animals on the planet", according to Mr Paul Masci, a scientist in the University of Queensland Department of Medicine at Princess Alexandra Hospital.
"Some of our snakes are the most toxic in the world, notably the brown snake, and all have novel chemistry, all have different targets, but all are designed to kill.
"If we can modulate the killing, it will help in drug design."
Mr Masci is establishing a large animal model to prove the efficacy of his drug, a prothrombin activator.
He is trying to develop an efficient expression system in order to make kilogram lots of it, and is hoping for sufficient data from the large animal study which will be conducted late this year or early next year to apply for registration and clinical trials.
It is not known how snakes produce this chemical, he said.
"The technology is there, we are just looking for the answers in our snakes.
"Australia has been isolated so long that we have developed a whole new genomic group of snakes, unlike those of neighbours such as Asia."
One of the technologies Mr Masci is developing is a method of putting a clot in place in less than 10 seconds in order to stem the bleeding from a gunshot wound.
"If you can stem the bleeding, you will have a much higher survival rate, because you can lose a litre of blood in less than a minute."
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