[SANET-MG] super Bt toxins

[jcummins <jcummins@UWO.CA>]

Crop spray may fight cancer too
17 September 2005
From New Scientist Print Edition.
INGREDIENTS of an organic crop spray designed to keep damaging insects 
at bay could be turned against cancer. Farmers have been using Bt 
sprays, which contain toxic proteins from the bacterium Bacillus 
thuringiensis, to kill pests for the past 40 years. But now the killing 
power of the toxins is to be tested against human cancer cells.

The Cry1 Bt toxin kills some insects by destroying certain types of gut 
cell. But David Ellar and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge 
hope to make the toxins target other cells by attaching the active part 
of the toxin to variants of human antibodies, forming a library of 
hybrid molecules called crybodies.

"In effect, we can have 100 billion different toxins," says Ellar, who 
presented his plans at the annual meeting of the UK Society for General 
Microbiology in Keele.

The next step is to screen each crybody against a range of cells in the 
lab, including cancer cells from humans and animals.

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