Assembling an antidote to anthrax

By C. Wu

Nations that illicitly produce biological weapons often favor spores of anthrax to pack the deadly punch. Unfortunately for potential targets, existing anthrax vaccines and antidotes don’t work well, says Jennifer Maynard of the University of Texas at Austin. Her team is engineering molecules to fight the bacterium.

Maynard started with three antibodies that bind to the anthrax toxin and prevent it from invading cells. Guided by the three-dimensional structure of the toxin, she honed in on the parts of the antibodies that are important to the binding. Next, she plans to change selected amino acids in the proteins and test how well the new versions bind. The team will also screen thousands of molecules with random amino acid changes to find the ones that best block the toxin.

References:

Maynard, J., G. Georgiou, and B. Iverson. 1998. Affinity maturation of anti-anthrax toxin SCFV. Meeting of the American Chemical Society. August. Boston.

Sources:

Jennifer Maynard
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Chemical Engineering
Austin, TX 78712

From Science News, Vol. 154, No. 10, September 5, 1998, p. 157.