As the bacterial disease continues to claim victims, researchers today identified the door that anthrax toxin uses to enter and kill mammalian cells. Eventually, the discovery could lead to a treatment for inhaled anthrax. Today, by the time of diagnosis, the patient usually has a deadly dose of anthrax toxin, so antibiotics do not help at that point (skin anthrax, however, is much easier to treat).
By showing how anthrax toxin enters cells, the discovery points toward a new, precise way to monkey-wrench the disease mechanism. Adding the new receptor protein to the blood of an anthrax patient might bind up anthrax toxin so it could not enter cells. The protein could also be used to screen for anti-anthrax drugs.
Both accomplishments, unfortunately, remain in the future, stressed John Young, a cancer researcher at University of Wisconsin-Madison who helped make the discovery. The experiment, he emphasized, used cultures of rodent cells. The protein is in short supply, and animal and human experiments are yet to be done.
It's the toxins, stupid!
Like many bacteria, anthrax kills by making toxins -- biological molecules that block biological processes or attack key systems. Whether you get anthrax through the lungs or skin, Bacillus anthracis attacks macrophages. Ironically, these are immune cells that normally eat anthrax and other bacteria.
http://whyfiles.org/
6th November 2001, 23:43
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