Question: How is antivenom produced from the proteins of venom?

Adam Hargreaves answered on 23 Jun 2017:

Hi T.C.E. Harris,
That was a frantic live chat, hope I managed to answer some of your questions.
The way we produce antivenom hasn’t changed much since it was first invented, which is to inject tiny quantities of venom into a large animal (usually a horse). The horses immune system will start making antibodies to fight the venom proteins (much like us when we get an infection). We can then extract these antibodies from the horses blood and purify them, and that’s a basic antivenom.
There are a couple of downsides to this method though which I am trying to address with my research. The first is that the antivenom you make depends on the snake venoms you use. For example, if you only use king cobra venom, the antivenom will probably only work for king cobras. Added onto that, snake venom contains hundreds of proteins, most of which aren’t actually toxic, so you’re making lots of antibodies against stuff you don’t need to target. I’m trying to use the inhibitor proteins snakes use to protect themselves as antivenom components, that way the antivenom is targeted only to the toxic proteins. The most major one is that the old method needs lots of live animals, and keeping lots of horses can be very expensive. I’m trying to develop a method where we can actually produce antivenom using human cell lines (which you can just buy and store in the freezer), that way there are no animals needed and it should hopefully make the cost of antivenom a lot cheaper so the people who really need it (who are usually the people most affected by poverty) are able to afford it.