The Suit Magazine

At dusk in the southern islands of Indonesia, under the cover of brilliant pink orchid shoots and tangled woody vines, the Komodo dragon lies low to the ground. An unlucky deer walks by, and the giant lizard pounces from the underbrush and tears into its prey with serrated teeth. The victim may break free, but by then it’s too late—fatally poisonous strains of bacteria are already seeping into its blood.

Thousands of miles away at a pharmaceutical laboratory in the United States, the work day has just begun. Interns in white coats sort vials of biologics under fluorescent lights. The formulation of an antibody is underway, and samples of Komodo blood may hold the key to a breakthrough.

Expeditionary biologist Terry Fredeking is the middleman, the messenger.  One week he may be consulting with scientists on the creation of a vaccine; the next, he may be trekking across a forested island, chasing down 300-pound carnivorous reptiles with nothing but a syringe and a forked branch.
Fredeking is the owner of Anitbody Systems Incorporated, and his job is to find and deliver the exotic materials that we need to fight diseases. “We have been contracted with major pharmaceutical companies to collect rare biologics for the purpose of developing new medications,” he said in his interview with The Suit. “This would include blood samples from Komodo dragons, parasite extracts from the Tasmanian devil, saliva from vampire bats, and snake venom.”

Antibody Systems is involved in a number of pursuits; the Komodo dragon project is just one. Fredeking explains that these lizards have existed for 25 million years, and were only discovered by the Western world about a century ago. Their long and relatively isolated evolution makes them unique—and scientifically valuable. If researchers can isolate the mechanism behind the dragons’ immunity to their own lethal bacteria, they may be able produce the most powerful antibiotic known to man.

Also on the agenda is an HIV/AIDS vaccine. “We’re working with a strain of the HIV virus that is harmless to humans, but it’s something that we’re looking at to make a vaccine from,” Fredeking said. “This is transmitted only by monkey bites. So we went all over the country collecting blood samples from zoo workers, veterinarians and monkey handlers.” For this project, Antibody Systems has its own office and staff at the Center for Disease Control, where the government aids their efforts to turn a primate virus into a human cure.

Natural diseases aren’t Fredeking’s only target; sometimes man-made scourges pose the greatest threat. He’s traveled to the Siberian tundra to help combat bioterrorism. “There’s a huge lab there,” he said. “It used to manufacture biological weapons in the old Soviet Union days. They had 5,000 people working there, and they made all these pathogens.” After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the lab’s existence came to light. “Scientists from all over the world were invited in to destroy it. And they destroyed all the stocks, but still there were 5000 employees who knew how to make [the biological weapons], and those guys were being recruited by everybody from North Korea to Iran. So the U.S. government stepped in to fund the research to make vaccines and antidotes for these terrible weapons. And that’s how I got involved.”

The Suit asked Fredeking how he first got his start in the field. “My father was a doctor, and he wanted me to be a doctor. My mother wanted me to be a banker. So for a joke, I got into blood banking!” he said. “That led to viruses and immunology and hematology and oncology, and all the ‘ologies.” While Fredeking was doing some research work on treatments for HPV, a group of scientists approached him with a request. “They said, ‘We don’t really want you in a laboratory looking into a microscope. Do you want to go into the field? Because we sure don’t want to send our PhDs out there to get killed, and we’ll pay you quite well!’ And I agreed to that,” he recalls.

Since then, Fredeking’s life has revolved around a series of fantastic journeys, exotic adventures, and exciting new leads in drug development. He risks his life “quite often” in pursuit of medical innovations, but in the end he knows that his work makes the world a safer place for everyone else.

“Handling these level-four viruses is probably more dangerous than Komodo dragons. But if you know what you’re dealing with, you’re more prepared to be safe,” he said. “I’ve been very lucky.”

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