Snakeman, who 'self-immunized' himself against snake venom, endured over 200 snake bites to create an antidote
One man did the unthinkable, and now humanity may get the cure for several snake venoms. This whole pursuit and its results have been published in the journal Cell. The man in question is a Wisconsin native known as Tim Friede. For two decades, he has allowed hundreds of deadly venomous snakes to bite him and has survived to tell the tale. Experts think that interaction with these venoms somehow equipped his immune system to defend against them. Now, the biotech company Centivax is using insights from his immune system to develop an antidote to snake poisons.
Snakeman's bravado or foolishness?
In the past two decades, Friede has received bites from a variety of snakes, such as tiger snakes, king cobras, and black mambas, according to Popular Mechanics. In many cases, he has experienced prolonged exposure to the venoms, which supposedly made him immune to the snakes' poison. Researchers believe that Friede developed antitoxin antibodies to resist the damage of these poisons. Friede serves as the director of herpetology at Centivax and was doing this as a scientific endeavor, to produce an efficient antidote against snake venom for humanity.
However, there were times when this bravado caused him some serious trouble, such as when twin bites from an Egyptian cobra and a monocled cobra sent him into a temporary coma. In 2018, Friede stopped the exercise after around 202 bites, according to Science News. Today, he undergoes multiple physical evaluations to prevent any long-term damage from snake bites. Through his endeavor, he may help in creating an antidote like no other. However, he does not want anyone else to replicate his actions. "We are actively discouraging anybody from trying it," Friede shared. "No one ever needs to do it again."
Hitting with the best shot
Friede claims that in the last two decades, he has "self-immunized" himself against many of the deadliest snake venoms in the world. His process had been simple: milking the venom from the snake and then injecting progressively larger doses into his bloodstream. "It always burns and it's always, always painful," he shared. Jacob Glanville, president and CEO of the biotech company Centivax, claimed that the more exposed Friede got to the poison, the better his immune system became at handling it. The key was steadily increasing the doses, which allowed his immune system to gradually create defenses.
Friede's immune system has created a one-of-a-kind assortment of antibodies that have the capacity to neutralize the toxin rampant in venoms. Researchers wanted to use this feature to create an antidote that could save accidental snakebite victims. Success in this pursuit will be huge, as according to the World Health Organization (WHO), snakebites kill around 140,000 people each year. Friede's system was tempting to use because it had a "single" solution to bites by multiple snake species. It gave experts the choice to create a singular antidote, rather than invest resources in different resolutions, which requires both time and effort.
Creating a master antidote
Glanville connected with Friede, and the latter immediately agreed. It wasn't the first time Friede had donated his blood to a pursuit like this. However, all of them had failed for different reasons in the past. From a small sample of Friede's blood, researchers took out two antibodies and mixed them with a toxin-blocking drug called varespladib. The cocktail completely protected mice from the lethal dose of venom from 13 different kinds of snakes, and partially protected against six species. Researchers are now looking forward to the next step of testing and want to treat dogs with snake bites using the combination. As the process goes on, researchers will go back to the several antibodies they collected from the blood sample, and use them to increase the efficiency of the antidote. It is still a long way away from human use.