This powerful creature has the ability to neutralize almost all poisons. Even from creatures it has never encountered.
Opossums inhabit Central America and the eastern half of the United States. Due to their low body temperature and successful immune system. It’s very rare for one to carry rabies. They have also been known since the 1940’s. To posses high level of immunity against snake venum there blood maybe key to fighting the effects of snake bites worldwide.
The animal produces a protein known as Lethal Toxin-Neutralizing Factor (LTNF), which can neutralize snake venum. The protein works against several venomous snake species including America’s western diamondback rattle snake and India’s Russell viper.
Scientists performed a series of experiments on mice. The researchers first injected the mice with snake venom. And then incubated them with opossum’s LTNF protein. 
The mice never showed any signs of being sick. But now, since the protein responsible has been located. Scientists could mass produce the substance as a universal antivenom.
As many as 94,000 people die each year as a result of snake bites.
While antivenoms already exist for many snake bites. The compound can be costly and need to be tailored to each animal. Because a snake’s venum contains hundreds of different compounds. Each with it’s own method of subduing the victim. Once you have a hundred toxins or more in your body. In order to prevent symptoms of the bite, you would have to deactivate all of them. Making a universal antivenum is vital to saving lives.
However, scientists are concerned that isolating a single protein from opossums will most likely neutralize only one class of toxins. While the others would continue to destroy the body because the specific compounds found in a snake’s venum can vary defending on the species, the sex, age and geographic location. So even if the opossum protein work on one sample of Russell viper in the lab, the antidote might not hold up againsts all types of Russell vipers, which kill thousands of people every year in India.
As innovative and revolutionary this new method is. The approach still requires much more experimentations before being 100% accurate and ready for mass production.
Credit:
Hashem Al-Ghaili
