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FULLY HUMAN
THERMOSTABILIZED
UNIVERSAL ANTIVENOM
In 2018, snake bites stay ranked on the World Health Organization's list of neglected tropical diseases.
TOGETHER, WE HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THIS
THE PROBLEM
THERE IS A GLOBAL ANTI-VENOM CRISIS. Snake bites kill over 100,000 people a year, and leave another 150,000 permanently disabled. Major manufacturers of antivenoms are discontinuing their products, as snake bites preferentially affect less lucrative developing world markets. The antivenoms that exist are developed using crude serological extracts from sheep that have been injected with snake venom. These traditional antivenoms are specific to only one snake, are cruel to animals, vary in quality by batch, and can only be administered once, as the second administration produces an life-threatening immune reaction against the horse/donkey proteins. The sheep antibodies are digested into Fab fragments with short half-lives, requiring multiple expensive injections, and the antibodies have not been engineered for stability, meaning that the antivenom can spoil in areas without refrigeration where it is often needed most.
THE SOLUTION
FULLY HUMAN - THERMOSTABILIZED
UNIVERSAL ANTIVENOM
THE WORLD NEEDS a fully human, thermostabilized, universal anti-venom. A human bit by a snake will generate fully human antibodies against the snake venom, providing some protection in a subsequent exposure. For the past 16 years, Tim Friede has been boosted over 700 times with snake venom, including over 200 snake bits from live snakes. Over the course of these boosts, he has developed a remarkable immunity to snakes that would be ordinarily lethal, including cobras, taipans, black mambas, diamondback rattlers, and many others. He is resistant to a genetically diverse panel of snakes spanning the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe, indicating that he has affinity matured broadly neutralizing antibodies that can recognize and neutralize all snake venoms. Research on his blood have identified extremely elevated IgG4 anti-sera against snake venoms and a generally elevated IgG. Tim's blood contains the instructions for a universal, fully human antivenom.
CO-FOUNDER TIM FRIEDE
For the past 16 years, Tim Friede has been boosted over 700 times with snake venom, including over 200 snake bits from live snakes. Over the course of these boosts, he has developed a remarkable immunity to snakes that would be ordinarily lethal, including cobras, taipans, black mambas, diamondback rattlers, and many others. He is resistant to a genetically diverse panel of snakes spanning the Americas, Asia, Australia, Africa and Europe, indicating that he has affinity matured broadly neutralizing antibodies that can recognize and neutralize all snake venoms. Research on his blood have identified extremely elevated IgG4 anti-sera against snake venoms and a generally elevated IgG. Tim's blood contains the instructions for a universal, fully human antivenom.
CO-FOUNDER JACOB GLANVILLE, PHD
Jacob Glanville is a world expert in in high-throughput sequencing and antibody display bioengineering technologies capable of rapidly recovering the genetic instructions for antibodies developed from live immunizations. His company, Distributed Bio, has a team of experts routinely using these developed technologies in cutting-edge laboratory facilities in 329 Oyster Point, 3rd floor, South San Francisco, CA 94080. In collaboration with Tim, we will collect samples of his blood, seven days after an immunization when his circulating plasmablasts are at their highest levels. We will separate his anti-venom carrying serum from his antibody-encoding B-cells using ultra-centrifugation. Using a laser-based single cell sorting technology (Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting) and fluorophore chemically conjugated antivenoms, we will enrich a population of his anti-venom specific B-cells.
Raymond Newland, PSM
Ray Newland is a scientist and bioengineer with backgrounds in chemistry, biology, and bioinformatics. As a current Associate Scientist at Distributed Bio, Ray has constructed several natural antibody phage display libraries sourced from phenotypically extreme subjects, as well as brought the company’s NGS+Library technology online. This novel technology allows the team to deep-sequence and build libraries from the same aliquot of amplified DNA, while tracing antibodies back to the source blood-draw throughout rounds of panning. Ray has taken Tim’s blood and built a phage display library on Distributed Bio’s NGS+Library tech, consisting of over 2 billion members. He is currently phage panning the library across 10 biotinylated snake venoms from across the globe in search of a universal anti-venom treatment.
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MITHROS
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