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Starfish-shaped treatments for food poisoning

February 08, 2000

Embargoed until 19:00 GMT 9 February 2000


Research by scientists at the University of Cambridge could lead to new treatments of E. coli food poisoning.
The bacteria in E. coli produce a toxin which can damage the kidney and other organs.
But now, scientists at the University of Cambridge are part of a team that have developed a new way of neutralising the toxin.
Professor Randy Read, in the new Wellcome Trust Centre for the Study of Molecular Mechanisms in Disease, has been studying how this toxin binds to cells, using X-ray crystallography to obtain three-dimensional pictures of the molecules.
The team, which includes Professor David Bundle and Professor Glen Armstrong at the University of Alberta, in Canada, have used these pictures to develop an 'inhibtor' molecule.
In a paper due to be published this week in Nature, the team will explain how this molecule mimics the multiple interactions a cell would make with the toxin.
It has five arms and has been nicknamed the Starfish molecule.
Navraj Pannu, a PhD student, has used crystallography to see how the Starfish molecule binds to the toxin.
His results give hope that the design can be extended to provide inhibitors for other toxins - such as the one which causes cholera.
Professor Read cautioned that this development is only a first step.

"The Starfish molecule itself is unlikely to be a useful drug and further testing will be required to bring this work into the clinic.
"But what is exciting is the demonstration that a symmetrical molecule can be highly effective.
"The Starfish molecule binds more than a million times as tightly as a comparable one-armed molecule. An analogy could be made with Velcro, where each hook binds very weakly, but a large patch of hooks binds very strongly."


Cambridge, University of