A Cytotoxicity Assay as an Alternative to the Murine Model for the Potency Testing of Venom and Antivenom: An Intralaboratory Pre-validation Study.

Antivenom therapy is the only specific treatment for snakebite envenomation, and antivenom potency determination is key in the efficacy assurance quality control process. Nowadays, this process relies on the murine model - thus, the development of alternative methods is imperative. In the current study, the principle of the proposed method is the ability of venom to induce cytotoxic effects in Vero cells, and the capacity to evaluate the inhibition of this cytotoxicity by the respective antivenom.