Collaborating with scientists at Harvard, UW-Madison researchers have made an advance in understanding how anthrax works to kill humans.

In a time when anthrax is being used as a weapon of terrorism — three people have died from anthrax infection in the past few weeks — this breakthrough may be valuable in defending the nation from future bioterrorism attacks.

John A. T. Young, senior author of the Nov. 8 report, and Howard M. Termin Professor of Cancer Reseach at the Medical School McArdle Laboratory, says they and graduate student Kenneth Bradley have discovered the receptor to which anthrax binds in order to enter cells.

By genetically engineering parts of a protein called the anthrax toxin receptor (ATR), Young and Bradley were able to produce a form of ATR that blocks the toxin from entering cells.

So far, the scientists have done their research on cultured cells in the laboratory, so they have no data pertaining to actual use in defending humans from anthrax.
But still, the scientists said, it is a remarkable step toward future treatment.

“Our short-term goals are to study the mechanism of toxic uptake through ATR and to make enough of the toxin-blocking form of the receptor so that it can be tested in animal systems,” Young said. “A more long-term application would be for pharmaceutical companies to use the receptor along with anthrax toxin to screen the millions of compounds they’ve already synthesized to identify toxin inhibitors.”

Young and Bradley presented their findings to the National Institute of Health Tuesday.

According to a spokesperson at the McArdle Laboratory, the research and results do not necessarily correlate with the recent anthrax attacks in America.

The work is especially important because, though there are antibiotics available to combat anthrax, symptoms often do not appear until the fatal toxin has already been produced.

“The study really paves the way development of new approaches to inhibiting anthrax toxin,” Young told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The results of the study will be published Nov. 8 in the science journal Nature, but an early edition was posted on the Internet Tuesday because of current bioterrorism issues.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the patenting and licensing arm of UW, and officials at Harvard have filed a joint patent on the receptor.