Scientists have created a medicine that neutralizes the poison of the 19 most deadly snakes. They were helped by an American who for 18 years pricked a snake poison

Scientists from the United States have developed an experimental anti -heart drug using unique antibodies from the blood of a man who deliberately produced immunity to snake venom, introducing small doses to himself more than 800 times for 18 years. Mice tests showed - the new antidote turned out to be effective against neurotoxins of 19 types of snakes, including mammas and cobra, the research group reports .

This method is sharply different from the traditional production of antidotes based on the introduction of poison to horses and the release of antibodies from their blood. The new tool is potentially safer, more effective and more universal. But although such technologies promise progress, they solve only part of the problem - because snake bites annually kill up to 138 thousand people and cripple about 400 thousand, mainly in poor countries.

Difficulties with the creation of antidotes

The World Health Organization includes snake intoxication to unnoticed tropical diseases: 600 types of snakes annually become more than 100 thousand deaths and 300 thousand cases of disability in people. As a solution to the problem, widely neutralizing antibodies and a wide range of chemical inhibitors were proposed, but so far it was still unclear how to create a therapeutically effective cocktail and how many components it should include.

Plus, the production of antidotes is a unprofitable business: the drugs are expensive, quickly spoil, require a cold circuit and do not give scaling profit. And most importantly - snake bites most often occur in poor countries where treatment is not available. The development of new drugs is just a step. They need to be delivered quickly, and bites often happen in hard -to -reach regions. Therefore, WHO insists on the development of healthcare, the availability of antidotes and the enlightenment of the population about the behavior of snakes and precautions.

How was a new drug created?

American Tim Fried, who called himself a self-taught man-hero, practiced mitridatism-a conscious introduction of poison to develop stability. After hundreds of injections and bites in the blood of Frida, antibodies were developed - proteins of a wide range of an immune system. Scientists contacted him, took a sample of blood, identified the developed antibodies, sequenced the DNA of the B cells responsible for their production, and built these genes in bacteriophages. With their help, large batches of antibodies were obtained in the laboratory for further tests.