Growing up, I always thought someday I might be bitten by a poisonous snake (or encounter quick sand as well 😂) and I would read about how people would harvest snake venom in a lab or zoo to create anti-venom- to this day I don’t understand the process- can someone explain?
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So it starts with what venom is. Venom is a specific molecule (or set of molecules) that gets injected into your blood/body and starts causing damage.
To stop that damage from happening, you need your body to be able to target those molecules. Your body normally does this with anti-bodies. The things that stick to flu viruses and bacteria to mark them for your immune system to destroy.
The problem is we don’t have antibodies for venom constantly circulating in our blood, and by the time our bodies make antibodies the venom has already caused damage.
Anti-venom is pre made antibodies ready to be injected into someone to start marking the venom.
So how do we make antibodies? We inject the venom into farm animals, typically horses or sheep, then take blood from the animal that is now full of antibodies from their bodies fighting the venom, and then purify out just the antibodies from that blood. And boom you have some anti-venom ready to get injected into someone.
So yes, they need to harvest the venom itself from the snakes so they can cause the reaction to happen in the animal, so they can then harvest the animals antibodies and use it as anti-venom
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