Word: toxins
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Throughout his research career Pappenheimer has retained a keen interest in infectious disease. In particular, the diphtheria bacillus has fascinated him. This microscopic organism produces one of the most potent poisons known in biology. The toxin is, in fact, so powerful that a few molecules of it suffice to kill a cell. An easily made by product of the toxin, diphtheria toxoid, is harmless and serves as an excellent immunizing agent. With the virtually universal immunization of children in Europe and the United States, diphtheria has been "licked" in the medical sense. But it still provides many challenging biological questions...
...only antidote for botulism, and only moderately effective at best, is a Ledejle Laboratories antitoxin (made by injecting botulinus toxin into horses and extracting their immune serum). It costs about $68 a 20,000-unit vial, and each victim needs at least 50,000 units. Nearest supply was in Portland, Ore.: six vials. More was flown from Denver and Los Angeles. Still not enough. At its Pearl River (N.Y.) headquarters, Lederle drained the barrel, packaged nearly all the remaining antitoxin. Total haul: 139 vials, tagged at $9.591-which Lederle marked "paid," as a public service...
...breed oats resistant to Helminthosporium victoriae blight, Dr. Wheeler decided to copy the method of the bacteriologists. He reports in Science that he sprouted 100 bu. of oats (about 45 million grains), then doused the sprouted seeds with the toxin (poisonous secretion) of the Helminthosporium fungus, and later with the fungus itself. Out of the 45 million, 973 seedlings survived and grew. Thirty days later they were treated with all the other oat diseases, and 471 survived the second ordeal...
Morris, in his investigation, obtained trays of cut chicken not used for the meal and had them crushed. A smear test revealed the presence of "staphylococcus organisms, which generate a poisonous toxin when they are left in warm...
Meanwhile, in West Germany's Bayer Institute for Experimental Pathology, other researchers read his reports on the drug's selective toxin. Directed by another Nobel Prizewinner, Professor Gerhard Domagk, the Germans took up where Waksman left off. Working with fungus cultures, they isolated actinomycin C, a new form of the original antibiotic...