'Unparalleled' snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times
'Unparalleled' snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/43303191
This article really keeps getting better and better.
I feel like all the coverage of this leaves out a massive gaping logical hole.
Like anti-venom / anti-bodies are produced by injecting a horse with venom and then collecting the anti-bodies it produces as a result.
In this situation our man Tim is that horse, and he had to inject himself with 900 different venom injections to produce these broad anti-bodies.
Is the plan going forward, to give horses 900 different venom injections to try and recreate this? Is there a synthetic way of making a known anti-body that they're not mentioning? If there is, then why are we still injecting horses with so much snake venom?
The immune system is super complicated but essentially when an animal or person are exposed to some sort of substance white blood cells sample that compound and create an antibody that is tailored to bind and neutralize it. Different substances range in their ability to induce this response and it often takes repeat exposures to get the titre to high enough levels. So one way or another some sort of animal needs to be exposed to the venom whether it be horse, goat or mouse and we would harvest the antibody for use in emergency situations where we need to immediately reverse the effects of a snake bite.
Another way would be to do this in cell culture but I'm not quite sure how that works, I think thats easier to do when the proteins are directly coded for like insulin or something. You could probably harvest B cell clones that produce the antibody to the venom, make them immortal and harvest it that way but I'm less familiar with that sort of wok so I can't really comment further.
To produce ABs in cell culture you usually create a hybridoma cell line, by fusing the B-Cell to an immortal tumour cell line (as you postulated). This approach does however require you to identify the cells that produce the proper antibody.
It gets much easier if you know the exact sequence/structure. To learn this (or find a better one) it is also possible to generate libraries of antibody sequences with semi-random hypervariable regions (the part that binds the antibody) using for example phages that will display any protein on their surface area and then measuring the binding affinity! This is called - drum roll - phage display (very creative).
Alright, enough trivia for now.
Why the antibodies can't be analyzed and chemically synthesized in lab? I'm a total noob in immunology but haven't we got quite good at synthesizing organic stuff with say custom bacteria?
Not one mention of how this guy got his hands on so many different snake venoms in order to acquire this broad immunity. Interesting dude nonetheless.
Fuck yeah science!
You know that guy is walking around strutting "oh yeah I am the snake man!"
Rykyard?
Really cool. 😎
I was disappointed that it wasn't some Australian guy living the outback.
Would be on brand for Florida man though.
So... 'tangential' then? :-P
I've been bitten by mildly venomous snakes before. It's definitely not pleasant, but to be honest, an irate housecat would do a lot more damage. It's more like a bee sting. Still, props to this guy and the scientists who worked to get this result.
