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The planet is home to hundreds of species of snakes that boast venomous bites with the potential to kill a human being. Most people aren’t scrambling to interact with them, but one man who has spent close to two decades building up an immunity may be the key to unlocking a universal antivenom that has long eluded the scientific community.
The Princess Bride features a scene where a character outfoxes a foe by forcing him to drink wine tainted with iocane powder with the help of a ruse that required him to spend years building up an immunity to the deadly (and fictional) substance.
That was based on a real-life strategy known as mithridatism, a practice traced back to a paranoid king known as Mithridates the Great, who purposefully ingested small amounts of poison over time to build up his tolerance and increase the chance of surviving a covert assassination attempt.
It’s a risky approach but one that can be successfully deployed to minimize the effect of potentially deadly toxins, like the various forms of snake venom at the center of a fascinating new study that was recently published in the journal Cell.
The paper revolves around Tim Friede, a 57-year-old Wisconsin man who has spent close to 18 years injecting himself with venom sourced from 16 deadly species of snakes— including black mambas, taipans, and Mojave rattlesnakes—while taking videos where he willingly allows them to bite him as evidence of his immunity.
According to The New York Times, Friede donated his blood to the scientists who analyzed it and detected antibodies that may allow for the development of an antivenom that could be used to counter the effects of multiple species of snakes (as things currently stand, the vast majority of antidotes are only designed to combat a bite from a single one).
The researchers conducted an experiment on mice using two of the antibodies in his blood in conjunction with a drug capable of blocking neurotoxins. They discovered the treatment protected the mice from 19 unique types of deadly venom from snakes around the world, which has the potential to spawn a revolutionary advancement.
There’s still plenty of work to be done before a universal antivenom becomes reality, but this is certainly a big step in the right direction.