Licensing Deal May Reduce Price Of Expensive Snakebite Treatment by 2018

The lack of competition for drugs to treat snakebites has meant that a run-in with a pit viper might set you back more than $50,000 for treatment.

An alternative will be possible as soon as 2018, 10 years earlier than planned, after the maker of the only antivenin sold for rattlesnake bites in the U.S. reached a licensing deal with Rare Disease Therapeutics Inc. to settle a patent dispute.

The agreement with BTG Plc is expected to ease the financial burden for the 3,000 to 4,000 people bitten each year by copperheads, cottonmouths, rattlesnakes and other members of a North ...