Lancaster researcher Dr Steven Hall has won an award from the Canadian Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics for the best paper of the year.

The Publication Award is awarded to a member of the CSPT annually for the best publication from the previous year.

Dr Hall’s paper in Nature Communications looked at how new drug combinations could protect snakebite victims from the serious injuries caused by toxic venom.

Existing antivenom treatments are largely ineffective against the tissue destruction caused by the cytotoxic venomous bites of a variety of different snake species, including many vipers, such as north American rattlesnakes, African adders and Latin American lanceheads.

Antivenom is currently received intravenously when a patient arrives at hospital, at which point much of the irreversible tissue damage has been done. The bites can cause rapid destruction of skin, muscle and bone and cause permanent injuries and disfigurements, including limb loss.

Dr Hall led the study of repurposed small molecule drugs 2,3-dimercapto-1-propanesulfonic acid (DMPS), marimastat, and varespladib, which target different toxins found in snake venoms.

His paper demonstrated that a combination of these repurposed drugs could inhibit specific snake venom toxins.

He said: “I’m incredibly pleased and honoured to have won this award. We hope to continue this work with the goal of developing a novel snakebite therapy that can be used in the field immediately after a bite occurs, thus helping to reduce the life-changing morbidity caused by snakebite that currently afflicts upwards of 400,000 people annually.”

Promisingly, these drug combinations showed effectiveness against several snakes with drastically different venom toxin profiles, raising hopes of an effective future pan-species, pan-continental snakebite therapy.

Abby Collier, Professor of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics Chair, CSPT Awards Committee, congratulated Dr Hall, who has also been invited to attend the CSPT annual conference in Ottawa.

“Specific points of excellence included comments from committee members on the technical excellence of your paper as well as its potential scientific and real world impact.”