‘Unparalleled’ Snake AntIndom made of man bitten 200 times

The blood of an American man who has deliberately injected himself with snake venom for almost two decades has led to an “unparalleled” AntiVenom, scientists say.

Antibodies in Tim Friede’s blood has been shown to protect against fatal doses against a wide range of species in animal testing.

Current therapies must match the specific types of poisonous snake that everyone has been bitten by.

But Mr. Friede’s 18 -year -old mission could be an important step in finding a universal anti -venom against all snake bits – who kill up to 14,000 people a year and three times as many rooms that amputations need or permanent disability must be confronted.

In total, Mr. Friede has passed more than 200 bites and more than 700 injections of Gif that he has prepared from some of the deadliest snakes in the world, including several types of Mambas, Cobra’s, Taipans and Kraits.

He initially wanted to build his immunity to protect himself in handling snakes, documenting his exploits on YouTube.

But the former truck mechanic said that he “completely crushed” early when two Cobra quickly bite him in a coma.

“I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to lose a finger. I didn’t want to miss work,” he told the BBC.

Mr Friede’s motivation was to develop and explain better therapies to the rest of the world: “It just became a lifestyle and I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing as hard as I could push – for the people who are 8,000 miles from me who die from Snakebite”.

AntIndom is currently being made by injecting small doses of snake venom in animals, such as horses. Their immune system fights the poison by producing antibodies and they are harvested to be used as therapy.

But poison and antivenom must be closely matched because the toxins vary from one type to species in a toxic bite.

There is even a wide variety within the same kind – AntIndom made of snakes in India Is less effective Against the same species in Sri Lanka.

A team of researchers started looking for a kind of immune defense called broad -neutralizing antibodies. Instead of focusing on the part of a toxin that makes it unique, they focus on the components that are common for entire toxin classes.

That is then Dr. Jacob Glanville, Chief Executive of Biotech Company Centivax, Tim Friede met.

“Immediately I had something like” if someone in the world has developed this broad -neutralizing antibodies, it will be him “and so I put my hand out,” he said.

“The first phone call, I had something like” this might be uncomfortable, but I would like to get some of your blood “.”

Mr. Friede agreed and the work received ethical approval because the study would only take blood instead of giving him more poison.

The research was aimed at Ellapids – one of the two families of poisonous snakes – such as coral hoses, Mambas, Cobras, Taipans and Kraits.

Ellapids mainly use neurotoxins in their poison, which paralyzes their victim and is fatal when it stops with the muscles needed to breathe.

Researchers chose 19 Elapids who had been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the deadliest snakes on the planet. Then they started searching the blood of Mr Friede for protective defenses.

Their work, Detailed in the magazine cellidentified two broad -neutralizing antibodies that can focus on two classes of neurotoxin. They added a medicine that aimed for a third to make their AntIndom cocktail.

In experiments with mice, the cocktail meant that the animals survived fatal doses of 13 of the 19 species of poisonous snake. They had partial protection against the remaining six.

This is “unparalleled” width of protection, according to Dr. Glanville, who said it “probably covers a whole group of Elapids for which there is no current AntiVenom”.

The team tries to further refine the antibodies and see if adding a fourth component can lead to total protection against Ellapid Snake Venom.

The other class of snake – the Vipers – is more dependent on hemotoxins that attack the blood, rather than neurotoxins. In total there are about a dozen wide classes of toxin in snake venom, which also includes cytotoxins that kill cells immediately.

“I think we have something effective against each of those toxin classes in the next 10 or 15 years,” said Prof Peter Kwong, one of the researchers at Columbia University.

And the yacht continues in the blood samples of Mr. Friede.

“Tim’s antibodies are really pretty extraordinary – he has learned his immune system to get this very, very broad recognition,” said Prof. Kwong.

The ultimate hope is to have a single antivenom that can do everything, or one injection for Elapids and one for Vipers.

Prof Nick Casewell, the head of the Center for Snakebite Research and Interventions at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said that the width of the protection was “certainly new” and “a strong proof” provided that this was a feasible approach.

“There is no doubt that this work brings the field forward in an exciting direction.”

But he warned that there was “a lot of work to do” and that the Antivvenom still needed extensive tests before it could be used in people.

But for Mr. Friede, reaching this phase “gives me a good feeling”.

“I do something good for humanity and that was very important to me. I am proud of it. It’s pretty cool.”