A Brief History of the Alistair Reid Venom Research Unit

Dr Hugh Alistair Reid's interest in the medical problems of snake bite began after he joined Penang General Hospital, Malaya as the consultant physician in 1952. He conducted several epidemiological and clinical studies on bites by sea snake (Enhydrina schistosa) and the Malayan pit viper (Calloselasma rhodostoma) and was soon a world authority. In 1961, he founded the Penang Institute of Snake and Venom Research, which amongst other activities, supplied venom from locally caught sea snakes to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Melbourne to prepare the first antivenom against this particular snake venom.

The next year, he, together with Findlay Russell and Paul Saunders, founded the International Society of Toxinology - an important forum for all scientists and physicians involved in venom research. Coincident with the award of the Order of the British Empire in 1963, he joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and subsequently founded the Venom Research Unit. His clinical and scientific endeavours continued apace with the prescient suggestion that the pathological effects of certain venom components could be exploited as potent pharmaceutical agents. Arvin (ancrod), a potent anticoagulant to treat deep vein thrombosis, was purified from Malayan pit viper venom as a result of his clinical observations.

The recruitment of Prof. David Theakston into the Venom Research Unit in 1974 and a continuing collaboration with Dr David Warrell (then at Ahmadhu Bello University, Nigeria) on a clinical trial of antivenoms to treat envenoming by saw-scaled vipers (Echis ocellatus) in Nigeria was the start of decades of research on biological, epidemiological and clinical aspects of snake bite in West Africa and elsewhere, the development of an ELISA snake venom detection technique and the designation of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as a WHO Collaborating Centre for the Control of Antivenoms. The Venom Research Unit was renamed the “Alistair Reid Venom Research Unit” in commemoration of Dr Reid who died in 1983.

Under the leadership of David Theakston, the unit continued the application of contemporaneous scientific techniques to identify and understand the function of venom toxins with the objective of improving the treatment of snake envenoming. By recruiting key individuals (Drs Gavin Laing and Paula Sells) he consolidated the unit as a centre of excellence for efficacy testing of new antivenoms, immunodiagnosis and instigated enduring collaborative links with David Warrell, Aura Kamiguti, John Harris, Ana Moura-da-Silva, Jose-Maria Gutierrez, Steve Watson and Jay Fox amongst many others.

In the early 1990s, David Theakston ensured that the unit was involved in the early use of genetic techniques for the molecular characterisation and expression of venom toxins with Julian Crampton and later enthusiastically supported Dr Rob Harrison’s first project (2000) exploring venom toxin DNA immunisation as a means to raise toxin-specific antibody. Although recently retired (2005) as a Professor Emeritus, David Theakston remains very active in helping to resolve the crisis in antivenom supply for West Africa.

Rob Harrison has assumed leadership of the unit at an exciting time. Gavin Laing has been very active in investigating the role of inflammatory cytokines in the pathology of local envenoming and in “drug discovery”. The recruitment of Dr Simon Wagstaff has added important molecular and bioinformatic expertise to the Unit, which, aside from the provision of venom gland EST databases, makes the prospect of developing rational, toxin-specific “designer” antivenoms ever more realistic. Rob Harrison has initiated an exciting collaboration with the Dr Ulrich Wernery, Director of the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory in Dubai to investigate the possibility that camel IgG may have significant advantages over ovine and equine IgG used in the production of conventional antivenoms. So while the technology has changed dramatically since Alistair Reid established the unit, our scientific objectives remain remarkably similar: research to improve the treatment of envenoming.