By Nidhi Subbaraman

For more than a decade, Tim Friede collected dangerous snakes at his home in Richfield, Wis., milking their venom and injecting himself with the toxins.

The goal?

To immunize himself against the world's deadliest snakes. "I just wanted to know if I could beat the bite," he said.

Now, his blood has been used to create a prototype for a universal antivenom.

Over two million people a year are bitten by venomous snakes globally, and more than 100,000, die of the toxins, which can rot tissue, paralyze muscle or stop the heart.

Existing antivenoms work only against specific species or closely-related snakes. The new cocktail described in the journal Cell in May fully protected mice against a lethal dose of venom from 13 deadly snake species, including the black mamba and king cobra, and offered some protection for venom from six other species.

"Having something that could be used regardless of what bit you could be hugely beneficial," said Steve Hall, a snakebite pharmacologist at Lancaster University in the U.K., who wasn't involved with the study.

Study authors Jacob Glanville, the founder and chief executive of San Francisco-based Centivax, and Peter Kwong, a vaccine researcher at Columbia University, had studied vaccines that targeted multiple strains of a virus for years and were looking to apply their know-how to a universal snakebite antidote when Glanville heard about Friede.

Starting in 2001, Friede, who has never left the country, began having cobras, rattlesnakes, mambas and other dangerous species shipped to him. He milked the venom from their fangs, dehydrated the fluid, dissolved it in saline and injected himself with increasing concentrations of prepared venom.

Then he'd let the snake make the bite.

Friede, 57, was bitten by more than 16 different species and said he went into anaphylactic shock a dozen times.

"I would love to get my hands on your blood," Glanville recalled telling the former construction worker.

The team isolated and tested two antibodies from Friede's blood. They were most potent in mice when used together, along with varespladib, a drug that has antivenom properties.

Antivenoms are made largely as they first were crafted 130 years ago, from the blood of sheep or horses that are injected with nonlethal snake venom doses to prompt them to develop antibodies. The animals are bled, and their plasma extracted.

The downside is that these antivenoms are expensive to make, and some people have a serious allergic reaction to the animal proteins, which human antibodies wouldn't trigger, Glanville said.

The team plans to test versions of the cocktail next in dogs in Australia that are bitten by snakes. They also plan to test other antibodies from Friede's blood for their antivenom qualities.

"He's our reservoir," Glanville said.

And now, he's also the company's director of herpetology.

Write to Nidhi Subbaraman at nidhi.subbaraman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 10, 2025 11:00 ET (15:00 GMT)

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