Design "Trojan" to fight the strongest toxins

, a new strategy to combat the world's "strongest toxin" has passed its first animal experiment. Two research teams have developed a neutral form of botulinum toxin that drives its deadly parts into the nerves and disarms them. The paper was published recently in Science -Translational Medicine.
if it works for the human body, it will be the first to reverse the effects of endocular toxin paralysis, which may eliminate the need for patients to use a ventilator for long periods of time. Brenda Anne Wilson, a toxin microbiologist at the University of Illinois at Champaign, said it would be "very helpful in life-threatening situations."
"strongest toxin" Botox is produced by bacteria and can grow in poorly preserved foods and infected wounds. It penetrates motor nerves and breaks down proteins that are vital to nerve signals. "It doesn't kill neurons, but it makes them 'silent,'" said Konstantin Ichtchenko, a biochemist at New York University School of Medicine.
trace botulinum toxin can control muscle spasms and relax wrinkles, but high doses can cause respiratory paralysis. The current treatment is a mixture of antibodies that inseal the toxins in the blood, but it does not enter the nerves. When symptoms appear, they are already out of reach.
team, led by Ichtchenko and Boston Children's Hospital neuroscientist Min Dong, is now connecting the neural antibody to a modified form of the toxin itself, making it more "good" at entering nerve cells. "We just created a 'Trojan horse,'" Ichtchenko said.
to design the "Trojan Horse," the team made three genetic adjustments to a natural form of Botox to prevent it from cutting proteins.
researchers linked it to a tiny antibody from an alpaca that can inerte the toxin. Nanosomes are easier to "engineer" than full-size antibodies to achieve specific goals in cells and to better maintain structure when they enter the cells.
Dong's team injected the mice with a lethal dose of botulinum toxin, which was treated nine hours later when the paralysis began. The 10 mice given the highest therapeutic dose were able to be active within 6 hours, while the untreated had difficulty breathing. In another experiment, the team connected the modified toxins to two different nanosomes, enabling the simultaneous release of two common botulinum toxins.
Ichtchenko successfully experimented in mice, guinea pigs and macaques. Six of the monkeys treated survived 10 days of poisoning, while seven of the untreated monkeys did not survive 3.5 days.
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