Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of £4,177,873 (approximately $5,473,069 at the time of conversion) over five years to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to support a Phase II clinical trial investigating the potential of two oral drugs, unithiol and marimastat, to act as new therapies against bites from the common lancehead (Brazil) and the West African carpet viper (Ghana).
Bites from these snakes are potentially fatal, and require urgent treatment. If successful, both drugs would represent inexpensive treatments that could be deployed in rural settings.
This falls within Open Philanthropy’s focus area of global health R&D.