Tim Friede
speaker
39 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Tim Friede’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
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.
Well, would it help if I told you that I met a couple of researchers working on a potential solution?
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.
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.
Let me go back a little to 2001. Tim started with cobras because that's what he had on hand at the time.
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.
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.
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.
Perfect. So you already know that in the movie there's this fictional poison called Iocane powder.
Right. I smell nothing.
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.
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.
What?
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?
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.
Yep, right.
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.
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.
Yes. And then Jacob read about Tim.
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