Tim Friede’s YouTube channel is home to a collection of videos depicting the Wisconsin-native truck mechanic subjecting himself to purposeful snake bites, blood slowly dripping down his arms.
For the past 20 years, Friede has been one of the most notorious “unconventional” medical researchers, undergoing over 200 bites from the world’s deadliest snakes — and more than four times as many — 850 — venomous injections.
He did it all in the name of science.
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 100,000 people are killed by snake bites each year, with countless more being disabled by the venom of the deadly reptiles.
While life-saving anti-venom is available, very few countries actually have the capacity to produce it properly, given that most bites occur in remote and rural areas, and anti-venom requires arduous sourcing and accuracy.
But Friede’s blood is now full of antibodies, following decades of strategic exposure to the neurotoxins of mambas, cobras, and other lethal slithering critters.
His blood is now the source material researchers are using to develop an anti-venom capable of neutralizing a broad spectrum of snake bites.
“The venom is incredibly inflammatory, but it’s the psychological part that really gets you,” Friede told The Times earlier this week. “You’re aware of how dangerous these snakes are; you have to fight your panic. After that, it’s just a matter of experience, of time in the saddle. The more you do, the better you get.”
Friede started this hobby — which he is indeed adamant no one else tries at home — out of sheer curiosity in childhood. After playing with harmless garter snakes in his youth, he began keeping more dangerous species of snakes as pets. At one point, he had 60 of them in his home basement.
In 1999, he began extracting venom from his snakes, drying it, diluting it, and injecting himself with tiny doses — keeping meticulous records as he went.
He had one major hospitalization in 2001, when he was paralyzed and in a coma for four days. But instead of giving up, he doubled down.
“In hindsight, I’m glad it happened,” Friede told The Times. “I never made another mistake.”
Jacob Glanville, an immunologist and founder of biotech company Centivax, stumbled on Friede’s videos.
Now, Friede is the director of herpetology at Centivax and serves as something of a “human lab” to Glanville.
“For a period of nearly 18 years, [Tim] had undertaken hundreds of bites and self-immunizations with escalating doses from 16 species of very lethal snakes that would normally a kill a horse,” Glanville told The Guardian.
“It blew my mind. I contacted him because I thought if anyone in the world has these properly neutralizing antibodies, it’s him.”
To develop the new anti-venom, Glanville and his fellow researchers identified 19 of the world’s deadliest snakes — in the elapid family — which kill their prey by injecting neurotoxins into their bloodstream, paralyzing muscles (including the big, important ones, like the heart and lungs).
The trouble is, each species in the elapid family has a slightly different toxin, meaning they would each require their own anti-venom.
But Friede’s blood contains certain fragments of each of these toxins; protein molecules seen across the various species. Because of his decades of service to science, his blood also contains the antibodies required to neutralize these toxins, preventing them from sticking to human cells and causing harm.
Combining the antibodies LNX-D09, SNX-B03, and a small molecule called varespladib that inhibits venom toxins, Centivax has successfully created a treatment effective against the entire range of 19 species’ toxins.
Their work, which was recently published in the journal Cell, will soon be tested outside of the lab.
Trials will start with using the serum to treat dogs admitted to Australian veterinary clinics for snake bites. Assuming that goes well, the next step will be to administer human tests.
Researchers also believe that because the serum stems from a human, this should also lower the risk of allergic reactions when being administered to other people.
“The final product would be a single, pan-anti-venom cocktail,” Professor Peter Kwong of Columbia University, a senior author of the study, told The Times.
Or, he added, they could make two: “One that is for the elapids, and another that is for the viperids, because some areas of the world only have one or the other.”
As for Friede, he maintains his affinity for snakes, though his last bite was in November 2018, when he said “enough is enough,” according to The New York Times.
By then, he had certainly done enough. His pursuit of immunity could feasibly save countless lives.
“I’m really proud that I can do something in life for humanity,” Friede told The New York Times, “to make a difference for people that are 8,000 miles away, that I’m never going to meet, never going to talk to, never going to see, probably.”
Header image courtesy of Centivax
