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.⁠ ⁠ 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.⁠ ⁠ 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.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Photo: Centivax/AP