The video is less than 2.5 minutes long. A slim man with dense hair walks into the room, pulling a long black mamba that can kill the venom within an hour of the crate and biting his left arm. Shortly afterwards, he gives Taipan, Papua New Guinea, his right arm. “Thank you for watching,” he calmly walks out, his left arm bleeding before he leaves.
For nearly 18 years, 57-year-old Tim Friede injected with carefully calibrated escalate venom to build immunity to 16 deadly snake species. He also allowed the snakes (mostly one at a time, two as in the video) to be sunk about 200 times.
This coincidence (one of its names) could help solve global health problems. Over 600 species of venomous snakes roamed the world, biting 2.7 million people, killing around 120,000 people, and hurting 400,000 others.
In Friede's blood, scientists say they have identified antibodies that can neutralize the poisons of multiple snake species, a step to creating universal anti-toxicity, they reported in a journal cell on Friday.
“I am truly proud to be able to do something in life for humanity and make a difference for people 8,000 miles away.
Deforestation, human sprawl and climate change have increased the risk of snake attacks in recent years, but antivenom studies have not met demand.
“This is a bigger problem than the first world would achieve,” says Jacob Glanville, founder and CEO of Centivax, which aims to produce Broadpetrum vaccines and lead author of the study.
Dr. Granville and his colleagues discovered that two powerful antibodies from Freed's blood, when combined with drugs that block neurotoxins, protect mice from venom of 19 deadly snake species from large families found in different geographical regions.
According to experts not involved in the work, this is an extraordinary feat. Most anti-toxicities can counter venom from one or a few related snake species in one area.
Nicholas Casewell, a researcher at the UK's Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, suggests that anti-venom cocktails may successfully prevent deaths and injuries from all snake families.
“The principles of this research can definitely be applied to other snakes,” he said.
Friede's first encounter with snakes was a harmless bite by a five-year-old garter snake, which began his lifelong charm. “If I had known what was going to happen at the time,” he remembered, laughing loudly.
However, he did not begin to seriously dabble on snakes until he married his children and worked in construction. He began experimenting with scorpions around 2000, but quickly switched to snakes. At one point, his basement lab had 60 venomous snakes.
His experiment ended as soon as they began. On September 12, 2001, he was bitten by two cobras, like he went crazy by the terrorist attack the day before and the death of a friend a few days ago. They were his first bites by a living snake, and he had not built up enough immunity. He was fine after the first bite, but after the second he felt cold, his eyes began to droop and he couldn't speak. He woke up from coma four days later in the hospital.
His wife was furious, but he was mad at himself. He vowed to be more systematic in his work, carefully measuring the dose of venom and timing his bites.
“I work all day, go home, play with my kids and family, go downstairs, do things all night, wake up and do it again,” he said.
Other accidents have occurred, including accidental bites, anaphylactic shock, nest boxes and power outages. Friede describes himself as a non-conference scientist, but “there is no university in the world that can teach them how to do that,” he said. “I did as much as I could.”
Two teams of scientists sampled Friede's blood over the years, but neither project led anywhere. By the time he met Dr. Granville in 2017, he was ready to give up.
Dr. Granville was pursuing what scientists call antibodies that act widely as the basis for universal vaccines against the virus. He grew up in Mayan villages in the Guatemala Highlands and was intrigued by the possibility of using the same approach to Universal Antivenom.
Initially, he said he had the “humble” goal of finding someone like a clumsy snake researcher who was bitten several times. But then he came across a news article about Friede.
“I've been waiting for this call for a long time,” Dr. Granville says, I think Friede.
In collaboration with Columbia University immunologist Peter Kwon, Dr. Granville isolated widely-acting antibodies from Friede's blood and created a combination treatment.
Researchers tested antibodies from Friede's blood against venom in 19 snake species. One broadly neutralizing antibody identified mice protected from six species. A mouse was added with a small molecule called varespladib and a fully protected antibody against 13 snake species, providing partial protection against the remaining six.
Cobras and mamba produce toxins that paralyze neurons. The venom from the Viper family snake tears tissues and bleeds the victim. Each snake species within these families produces a distinct blend of dozens of toxins, and even within species the venom may vary by region, age, diet and season.
However, Antivenom is made in almost the same way as it was originally produced 130 years ago. A small amount of poison is pumped into horses, camels, or sheep, and the antibodies produced in response are harvested. Antibodies tend to be specific to the type of venom that is injected and do little to alleviate symptoms in other types of snakes.
In fact, many anti-toxicities can cause more serious problems than the venom itself, as mammalian proteins can cause fatal allergic shock.
Scientists are pursuing treatments that avoid this side effect. For the most important toxin family, a cocktail of small molecule drugs and monoclonal antibodies — an artificially powerful copy of human antibodies — may be able to neutralize the toxins of many species, Dr. Casewell said.
Researchers will then test Australian treatment with dogs brought to veterinary clinics for the snake. They also want to identify another element from Friede's blood, which will expand full protection to all 19 snake species that are the subject of the study.
But Friede himself is now finished. His last bite came from a water cobra in November 2018. He got divorced – his wife and children moved. “Well, that's enough,” he recalled the thought.
He missed the snake, he said, but it was not a painful bite. “I'll probably go back to that in the future,” he said. “But for now, I'm happy where things are.”
