India, May 8 -- It's not often that a major scientific paper leads one to a story like this. It was while reading a new Cell study on snake venom antibodies that the name of a "hyperimmune donor" in the acknowledgments caught my eye.

Behind that clinical language lies the story of Tim Friede, a self-taught snake enthusiast from Wisconsin whose obsession might one day unlock a medical innovation for snakebite victims across India and the world.

Snakebites kill up to 140,000 people each year, and among countries, India bears the highest toll. Treatment has changed little since the 1890s, when Albert Calmette first used horse serum to neutralise cobra venom in colonial India.

Antivenoms today are still based on animal-derived polyclonal a...