Tim Friede has been bitten by snakes lots of of occasions — typically on goal. Now scientists are learning his blood in hopes of making a greater therapy for snake bites.
Friede has lengthy had a fascination with reptiles and different venomous creatures. He used to take advantage of scorpions’ and spiders’ venom as a pastime and saved dozens of snakes at his Wisconsin residence.
Hoping to guard himself from snake bites — and out of what he calls “easy curiosity” — he started injecting himself with small doses of snake venom after which slowly elevated the quantity to attempt to construct up tolerance. He would then let snakes chew him.
“At first, it was very scary,” Friede mentioned. “However the extra you do it, the higher you get at it, the extra calm you turn out to be with it.”
Whereas no physician or emergency medical technician — or anybody, actually — would ever counsel this is a remotely good thought, consultants say his methodology tracks how the physique works. When the immune system is uncovered to the toxins in snake venom, it develops antibodies that may neutralize the poison. If it’s a small quantity of venom the physique can react earlier than it’s overwhelmed. And if it’s venom the physique has seen earlier than, it could possibly react extra rapidly and deal with bigger exposures.
Friede has withstood snakebites and injections for almost twenty years and nonetheless has a fridge full of venom. In movies posted to his YouTube channel, he exhibits off swollen fang marks on his arms from black mamba, taipan and water cobra bites.
On this picture supplied by Centivax, Tim Friede, heart, stands in a lab in South San Francisco, Calif., in 2023, that’s utilizing his blood to organize an antivenom to the bites of varied snakes.
Centivax by way of AP
“I wished to push the bounds as near loss of life as attainable to the place I’m simply principally teetering proper there after which again off of it,” he mentioned.
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However Friede additionally wished to assist. He emailed each scientist he might discover, asking them to check the tolerance he’d constructed up.
And there may be a want: Round 110,000 individuals die from snakebite yearly, in accordance with the World Well being Group. And making antivenom is pricey and tough. It’s typically created by injecting massive mammals like horses with venom and amassing the antibodies they produce. These antivenoms are normally solely efficient towards particular snake species, and may generally produce unhealthy reactions attributable to their nonhuman origins.
When Columbia College’s Peter Kwong heard of Friede, he mentioned, “Oh, wow, this may be very uncommon. We had a very particular particular person with wonderful antibodies that he created over 18 years.”
In a examine printed Friday within the journal Cell, Kwong and collaborators shared what they had been capable of do with Friede’s distinctive blood: They recognized two antibodies that neutralize venom from many various snake species with the goal of sometime producing a therapy that might provide broad safety.
It’s very early analysis — the antivenom was solely examined in mice, and researchers are nonetheless years away from human trials. And whereas their experimental therapy exhibits promise towards the group of snakes that embody mambas and cobras, it’s not efficient towards vipers, which embody snakes like rattlers.
“Regardless of the promise, there may be a lot work to do,” mentioned Nicholas Casewell, a snakebite researcher at Liverpool Faculty of Tropical Drugs in an e-mail. Casewell was not concerned with the brand new examine.
Friede’s journey has not been with out its missteps. Amongst them: He mentioned after one unhealthy snake chew he needed to minimize off half of his finger. And a few notably nasty cobra bites despatched him to the hospital.
Friede is now employed by Centivax, a firm making an attempt to develop the therapy and that helped pay for the examine. He’s excited that his 18-year odyssey might in the future save lives from snakebite, however his message to these impressed to comply with in his footsteps is straightforward: “Don’t do it,” he mentioned.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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