Synthetic epitopes as enriched targets for therapeutics development in cobra bites treatment

Cobra envenomation is among the commonest causes of high morbidity and mortality rates. Dermonecrosis is the major clinical macroscopic observation in cobra bites that often leaves suffer from permanent deformity due to amputation or chronic ulceration. Cytotoxin, one of the most abundant toxins in cobra venoms, is responsible for dermonecrosis. There are limited effective treatments against dermonecrosis because cytotoxin has lower immunogenicity, and sequence diversity among cytotoxins has been observed. This local effect thus ends up in sequelae. Venom toxin neutralisation requires the recognition of toxins’ epitopes. Therefore, this study aimed to characterise the empirical epitope properties of cytotoxin by immunoinformatics and mass spectrometry (MS) peptide mapping. The findings disclosed four regions corresponding to the epitope sites of cytotoxin. It is interesting that these epitopes were situated at the functional sites of the toxin. The epitope peptides of cytotoxin can be used as synthetic and rationalised enriched targets for new biotherapeutics development. This is a proof-of-concept for translational development of toxin-targeted therapeutics from the laboratory bench and advancing to preclinical efficacy testing.