Advances in Clostridial and Related Neurotoxins 3.0

Dear Colleagues,

Botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs), the causative agents of the potentially lethal vertebrate disease botulism, comprise a large and expanding family of protein toxins produced by various bacterial strains of the genus Clostridium. BoNTs are significant as disease-causing agents, potential bioterrorist agents, and as unique, long-lasting, and widely used bio-pharmaceutical agents. Currently, BoNTs are categorized into seven immunologically distinct serotypes, with several subtypes within each serotype. However, in recent years, discoveries of novel BoNTs, as well as potential BoNT homologues in other organisms, have challenged this categorization and expanded the family of BoNTs. While novel BoNTs are continually being identified by sequencing, most have not been purified and functionally characterized. The further identification and characterization of novel and known BoNTs will yield insights into the evolutionary forces driving the diversity of this protein toxin family and potentially reveal as-yet-unknown pharmacologic properties of BoNTs, with the potential to lead to novel or improved BoNT-based biopharmaceuticals. Furthermore, genetic methods now allow for the construction of recombinant and chimeric BoNTs, enabling the directed engineering of BoNTs with defined amino acid or functional domain substitutions. Combined with ongoing structural analyses, these studies will lead to a deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the toxicity and pharmacologic potential of a large family of BoNTs. Both approaches exploring novel BoNTs and recombinant studies are exciting avenues of research, with the potential to open the door to unlocking the underlying molecular and evolutionary mechanisms of the high potency of BoNTs, eventually leading to improved safety approaches, countermeasure development, and novel pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical applications.

Dr. Sabine Pellett
Guest Editor

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• botulinum neurotoxin
• BoNT
• toxicity
• molecular mechanisms
• recombinant
• derivative
• clostridium botulinum