In 1894, French immunologist Albert Calmette produced the first successful antivenom by injecting horses with small doses of Indian cobra venom, then harvesting their antibodies.
For 130 years afterwards, these life-saving concoctions — along with their considerable defects — have remained fundamentally the same. Each one works only against a single species, making treatment tricky if you can’t identify the snake that bit you. Plus, because they originate in animals, the foreign antibodies can prompt a severe immune response.
Over the past decade, however, antivenom experts have begun to envision a new future. Hoping to release the field from its 19th-century roots, they’ve adopted next-generation therapies to address a public-health scourge that kills upward of 100,000 people every year in tropical countries, and leaves many more permanently disabled. Their work is starting to pay off.
A New Antivenom Emerges
Earlier this year, in what they framed as a major step toward a “universal antivenom,” an international consortium of researchers unveiled 95Mat5: an antibody that counteracts a deadly toxin found in various snake species around the world.
