Typically manufactured from animal blood plasma, the antidotes often remain expensive, inconsistent, and difficult to scale across multiple snake species. Ljungars and colleagues wondered if using these to specially engineer proteins called nanobodies (VHHs) might provide a new antivenom treatment path. To do this, they first immunized the camelids with venoms collected from 18 African snake species. Funding a promising breakthroughIn laboratory trials with rodents, the new nanobody antivenom prevented the deaths of mice exposed to venoms from 17 of the 18 snake species. The treatment also outperformed the existing commercial antivenom, Inoserp PAN-AFRICA, in preventing necrosis and death in mice across all snake species.