Immunochemical Studies on Selected Marine Toxins

Among many low molecular weight, heat resistant, naturally-occuring marine toxins, paralytic shellfish positions and cyclic peptide toxins produced by algae are potentially hazardous to human health. We proposed to develop sensitive diagnostic methods for selected dinoflagellate toxins such as saxitoxin STX, and microcystin MCYST, cyclic peptide produced by some cyanobacteria. The objectives of this project are development of methodologies for the production of different antibodies and different testing ligands, and different assay procedures for marine toxins production of specific immunoassay reagents for evaluation. To achieve these objectives, the following work scopes were followed developmentimprovement of methods for conjugation of two groups of marine toxins STX and MCYST to protein carriers production of antibodies against the toxin-protein conjugates in rabbits production of monoclonal antibodies against these two groups of toxins improvement of immunoassay systems for the marine toxins immunoaffinity chromatography isolation of STX receptor and development antibodies against this receptor exploratory studies on anti-idiotype anti-ld antibodies for STX and MCYST immunochemical studies immunohistochemical studies in vitro and in vivo testing for neutralization of STX and MCYST with antibodies producing immunochemical reagents for evaluations.