Immunochromatographic Test for Rapid Diagnosis of Pythiosis Pythiosis is a life-threatening infectious disease in both humans and animals living in Asia, the Americas, Africa, and parts of Australia and New Zealand. Human pythiosis is endemic in Thailand where about 80% of the cases are reported. The etiologic pathogen is the fungus-like organism Pythium insidiosum. The disease has high mortality and morbidity rates. Use of antifungal drugs are ineffective against P. insidiosum, leaving radical surgery as the main treatment option. Prompt treatment leads to better prognosis of affected individuals and can be achieved by early and accurate diagnosis. Since pythiosis is being increasingly reported worldwide, there is a need for a rapid, user-friendly, and efficient test that facilitates the diagnosis of the disease. Figure 1. Hypha of P. insidiosum Figure 2. Rapid detection of pythiosis Immunochromatographic tests (ICT) to detect anti-P. insidiosum IgGs in humans and animals were developed. The test is a rapid, user-friendly, and efficient assay for serodiagnosis of pythiosis. The test kit has been mass produced for free distribution to hospitals with medical schools throughout the country. The use of ICT for early diagnosis and monitoring of pythiosis patients helps to save limbs and lives. These studies were published in international journals and the ICT test kits were also patented: A Rapid Multi-Host Specific Immunochromatographic Serodiagnostic Test for...

Development of Broad Spectrum Pan-specific Antivenoms against Venomous Snakes of Asia and Africa Snakebite envenomation is a serious medical problem in many tropical developing countries and was considered by WHO as a neglected tropical disease. Antivenom (AV), the rational and most effective treatment modality, is either unaffordable and/or unavailable in many affected countries. Moreover, each AV is specific to only one (monospecific) or a few (polyspecific) snake venoms. This demands that each country to prepare AV against its local snake venoms, which is often not feasible. The production of a pan-specific antiserum effective against major medically important elapids in Asia was studied. The strategy was to use toxin fractions (TFs) of the venoms in place of crude venoms in order to reduce the number of antigens the immunized horses were exposed to. This enabled inclusion of a greater variety of elapid venoms in the immunogen mix, thus exposing the horse immune system to a diverse repertoire of toxin epitopes, giving rise to antiserum with wide paraspecificity against elapid venoms. The antivenom prepared from this antiserum was expected to be pan-specific and effective in treating envenomations by most elapids in many Asian countries. Due to economies of scale, the antivenom could be produced inexpensively and save many lives. This simple strategy and procedure could be readily adapted for the production of...