Tim Friede
Appearances
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Well, good, because this is happening, and it all started with this guy, Tim Friede. My claim to fame is getting bit by snakes. For years, Regina, he's let snakes bite him.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Let me go back a little to 2001. Tim started with cobras because that's what he had on hand at the time.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
My first couple bites are really crazy. It's like a bee sting times a thousand. You can have levels of anxiety that go through the roof.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Tim's been fascinated with snakes for as long as he can remember. He used to hunt garter snakes growing up in Wisconsin. They're harmless. But over the years, to raise awareness of the actual danger that venomous snake bites pose, he's allowed himself to be bit some 200 times. Wow. By all kinds of snakes, black mambas, taipans, cobras, crates, and more.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Yes, that's right. So this may be kind of a deep cut, Gina, but you've probably seen the 80s fantasy movie, The Princess Bride.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Perfect. So you already know that in the movie there's this fictional poison called Iocane powder.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Wesley, he's one of the main characters who was just speaking, he ultimately reveals that he's built up an immunity to this poison by starting with a small dose that wasn't enough to kill him and gradually increasing that dosage over time.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
This is more or less what Tim did, Regina, except with snake venom. He admits it's been something of a rocky road, though. Right out of the gate, he says this happened.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
He recovered, got more careful, and he kept on going. Then at some point, he was like, hey, could my immunity to this swirl of toxins provide some kind of roadmap to making a broad kind of antivenom?
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Hi there, Regina. Yes, venomous snakes, to be exact. They're a big problem, especially in low- and middle-income countries and in the tropics. The World Health Organization estimates that every year tens of thousands of people die as a result of venomous snake bites and that they permanently disable several hundred thousand more.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Right. So usually when the human body encounters a foreign substance, whether it's a poison or a parasite or virus, it'll trigger some kind of immune response, which involves the production of antibodies, specialized proteins that specifically recognize that substance, bind to it and neutralize or destroy it.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Exactly. So pit viper antivenom, for example, is made from antibodies that already recognize pit viper venom and know how to handle it. And those antibodies can be used as a treatment. Gotcha. But here's the thing about existing antivenoms that might be administered. The antibodies that they contain aren't produced by human immune systems.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
For decades, they've come from animals like horses that have been injected repeatedly with small amounts of venom. Wow. But this guy named Jacob Glanville, he's the CEO of a biotech company called Centivax. He wondered about a different approach, making antivenoms from antibodies produced by humans. So he started calling around.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
So he found his way to Tim and called him up. Tim remembers Jacob saying to him, You're the guy I'm looking for.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
We need your blood. We need your antibodies. I'm like... Wow. Cool. Great.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Well, once Tim agreed to participate, Jacob got a blood sample from him and he scanned it for its immune memory. He searched the troves of antibodies for those that neutralize the neurotoxins of multiple snakes.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
The antibody, which has a name that's just a string of letters and numbers like a license plate, gave mice full protection against five snakes, the black mamba, and a mix of cobras. So Jacob and his colleagues wrote the journal Cell to gauge their interest in publishing the research. One of those colleagues was Peter Kwong, a structural biologist at Columbia University.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Yes, one that would take on even more snakes. This is so cool. The team agreed it was worth a try. First, they added a small synthetic molecule, one that had already been shown to work against some venoms. Here's Jacob again.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
The team also went back to Tim's blood and found a second broad-acting antibody.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
This cocktail of three components offered mice complete protection against 13 species and partial protection against six more, representing a set of genetically diverse venomous snakes from Asia, Africa, Australia, North America, and more.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Absolutely. The specific health risks vary, and that's partly because venoms are a brew of different chemicals. There are neurotoxic venoms that can lead to paralysis, including of the airway, so people suffocate. Other venoms can affect the blood, causing it either to fail to clot or to form clots too readily. Some venoms cause intense pain, and others cause no pain at all.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
There are other antivenoms that can neutralize a broad set of snakes, but this is the first one to do it using this approach.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Well, eventually human trials, which Jacob hopes are a couple years out. But before that, the team's planning to test their new cocktail in dogs that have been bit by venomous snakes in Australia.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
So this is a first step. But others in the field say it's an important one.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
This is David Williams. He evaluates antivenoms for the World Health Organization. He cautions that further developing this cocktail into a truly universal antivenom will inevitably have its challenges. Like right now, the recipe doesn't work on any vipers, which are a large portion of the venomous snakes that are out there. Wow.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
And another researcher I talked to, Stuart Ainsworth, he's a molecular biologist at the University of Liverpool who studies snake bites, antivenoms, and antibodies. He told me that now we know this cocktail works in mice, he's eager to see how it'll work in people given that venoms are complex chemical mixes.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
He became director of herpetology at Centivax, that biotech company. Wow. When he heard that his antibodies had helped create this new anti-venom cocktail, he says he was happy.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe it. I'm doing something for humanity and getting back to science.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
He's retired from the snake bite life for multiple reasons. But Tim told me he sometimes still misses it.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Yeah. Mostly in terms of just knowing where it could take his mind.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
To know you can beat that and keep her calm and keep her cool is a wonderful thing.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Nor should you, Regina. No one suggests you take the princess bride approach to snake venoms.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
For sure, Gina. Thanks for having me.
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
Well, would it help if I told you that I met a couple of researchers working on a potential solution?
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New Antivenom, Thanks To 200 Intentional Snake Bites
It's a cocktail that works against a diverse collection of venomous snakes using a process they hope could one day lead to a universal antivenom.