Editor's viewpoint
THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF BACTERIAL TOXINS
In the first decade of the 20th century, Pasteur's discoveries of anthrax, Kock's of tuberculosis and advances from observations of Loeffler, Roux, Yersin, Behring and Kitasato on diphtheria and tetanus and those of Ermengen on botulism greatly stimulated the toxin-orientated investigation.
The period from the late 1920s to the late 1930s yielded new developments in the study of several species of clostridia with importance in human and animal pathology. This led to the recognition of many extracellular antigens of relevant biological activity and to the development of successful vaccines. The onset of World War II stimulated the research about pathogenic anaerobes. In the early 1950s, Smith and Keppie and their staff working at the Microbiological Research Establishment at Porton, England, made essential observations and drew significative conclusions about the role played by many pathogenic bacteria and their products in human infections, with special emphasis on Bacillus anthracis. In 1955, this group of investigators revealed the existence of an undiscovered toxin elaborated by the B. anthracis and reported it as the principal factor of virulence in the fatal anthrax infection.
In the next two decades, 1960s and l980s, significative knowledge was achieved with the research about diphtheria toxin by the investigations of Strauss and Kendee, Collier, Honjo, Gill, Pappenheimer and that by De and collaborators about cholera toxin. Concomitantly, in this period, there was an intensive research on staphylococcal enterotoxins after the discovery of these extracellular products by De in 1953. The Food Research Institute of the University of Wisconsin, USA, and other scientific institutions in Europe emerged with brilliant publications showing improvement in the methods for enterotoxin detection, purification, mode of action and analysis of the molecular composition. More recently, studies were made on the toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1), a product elaborated by some enterotoxigenic strains of Staphylococcus aureus and described by Todd in 1978. With contributions made by many investigators and especially by Bergdoll, this syndrome was recognized as a pathological entity associated with the use of tampons mostly among teenagers without protective immunity and contaminated by the S. aureus TSST-1 producer.
In Brazil, many significative efforts have been made in the research on bacterial toxins by renowned scientific institutions such as the Butantan Institute, Ezequiel Dias Foundation and Centers located at the University of São Paulo, University of Campinas, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Londrina State University. In this context, these institutions contributed to progress in this field of science as well as to the establishment of the Brazilian Society on Toxinology, an institution devoted to the acquisition of knowledge on animal, plant and microbial toxins.
Associated to these efforts, The Center for the Study of Venoms and Venomous Animals - CEVAP-UNESP - will offer from February 17 to April 25 the International Specialization on Toxinology whose major objective will be the teaching of recent advances and applied knowledge on toxins and venoms to postgraduate students and professionals from Brazil and foreign countries.
Carlos Alberto de Magalhães Lopes
Associate Editor
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
08 Jan 1999 -
Date of issue
1997
