Abstract
Bacterial protein toxins are causative agents of multiple healthcare issues and yet are also components of strategies leading the therapeutic fight against a range of debilitating conditions. Chapter 8 provides an insight into the biology of key exemplar toxic proteins and describes how understanding the structure of such proteins can lead to the design of new therapeutics with novel mechanisms of action. Focusing the discussion on examples of cytotoxic proteins (in particular diphtheria toxin and pseudomonas exotoxin A) and non-cytotoxins (in particular botulinum neurotoxin), the possibility for using recombinant DNA techniques to create families of novel proteins is described. After approximately 30 years of investigation into the applications of bacterial toxins to treat human disease, there is clinical evidence of the success of this strategy and a number of additional examples are moving through pre-clinical and clinical investigation. Indeed, in a number of cases, bacterial toxins, or novel agents derived from fragments of bacterial toxins, are first line therapy options.
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