No specific treatment regime exists for a large number of biological toxins. These toxins pose a threat in a military context and also constitute a public health hazard, mainly when accidentally ingested. An important class of biological toxins are those which inhibit protein synthesis, found in plants as well as bacteria. Many of these share structural and mechanistic properties. They are proteins, often of about 60,000 MW, with two subunits, one responsible for binding to cells, the other for the toxic action. The most common targets of these toxins are in ribosome and the most toxic of the substances kill at one molecule per cell. Hygeia Pharmaceuticals develops human monoclonal antibodies for use as therapeutic agents. For this study, we will use ricin as a model system to demonstrate neutralizing specificity. We will perform an in vitro immunization and then fuse resulting lymphocytes with a proprietary human fusion partner. Resulting hybridomas will be cloned and assayed for antigen recognition and for the neutralization of ricin in model systems.
