An extraordinary drug discovery story was reported in Cell in May 2025. Centivax, a San Francisco-based biotech company specializing in vaccine development (link), created a powerful new anti-toxin effective against a wide range of peptide-based snake venoms. The antidote is a combination therapy: a cocktail of the neurotoxin-blocking drug varespladib and broadly neutralizing human antibodies derived from serum. Remarkably, the serum came from a single individual with a highly unusual hobby—voluntarily allowing himself to be bitten by the world’s deadliest snakes.
The resulting anti-toxin underwent extensive testing in mice and dramatically outperformed all currently available anti-snake serums.
Snakebites are listed among the World Health Organization’s neglected tropical diseases, responsible for up to 140,000 deaths and 400,000 disabilities annually, out of 2.3 million reported bites. For over a century, treatment has remained largely unchanged: a blend of polyclonal antibodies extracted from the blood of immunized animals—typically horses, camels, or sheep. Anti-venom must be administered quickly, usually within minutes to two hours of the bite. Delays often result in severe or fatal outcomes.
I personally experienced this as a teenager, spending three weeks in the hospital after a bite from a common European viper. I was bitten in the forest and did not receive anti-venom in time. Even when delivered promptly, existing antidotes have significant limitations. Animal-derived serum can trigger severe allergic reactions in humans, including anaphylaxis. Moreover, current anti-venoms are species-specific, requiring precise identification of the snake involved—no small feat, considering there are over 600 venomous snake species. Adding to the challenge, snakes usually inject a mix of multiple peptide toxins, further reducing the effectiveness of single-type antivenoms.
Because this area garners little interest from major pharmaceutical companies, the field of anti-venom therapy has seen minimal innovation for decades.
Returning to the Cell study: Dr. Glanville, Centivax’s founder and CEO, had long been seeking a person with multi-species snakebite exposure. Eventually, he discovered a YouTube reel by Tim Friede, who had documented himself being bitten by deadly cobras, black mambas, and Australian taipans in his basement (link). Over 18 years, Tim endured bites from 16 lethal snake species to develop a unique form of immunity.
This journey was anything but trivial. No safety protocols existed, and Friede faced life-threatening conditions—he once fell into a coma after two cobra bites and suffered countless blackouts and anaphylactic shocks. Eventually, the toll became personal: he divorced, and his family left. Yet, his blood now contains enough diverse antibodies to neutralize the venom of numerous snake species—an essential milestone in developing a universal snakebite antidote. When combined with varespladib, two of the most potent antibodies from Tim’s blood protected mice from venomous attacks by 19 deadly snake species.
This story naturally segues into a broader topic: serendipity in drug discovery.
Pharmaceutical R&D is arguably the most technologically advanced industry in the world. Drug discovery today is industrialized, rationalized, robotized, and increasingly AI-driven—on both chemistry and biology fronts. Each of the top ten pharmaceutical companies spend $10–18 billion on research annually. Yet, the probability of a newly developed drug reaching the market remains a mere 5%.
In fact, about 65% of drugs approved in 2023–2024 were not developed internally but licensed from academic labs or small biotech startups. Clearly, serendipity is still a king.
Historically, penicillin was discovered by Dr. Fleming, who noticed mold killing bacteria on an abandoned petri dish. Warfarin, a common blood thinner, originated from rat poison. And more recently, the wildly successful GLP-1 receptor agonists for weight loss—Ozempic and Mounjaro—emerged from obscure research on the saliva of the Gila monster, a venomous lizard.