Ricin - Potential Medicinal Use

Potential Medicinal Use

Some researchers have speculated about using ricins in the treatment of cancer, as a so-called "magic bullet" to destroy targeted cells. Because ricin is a protein, it can be genetically linked to a monoclonal antibody to target malignant cells recognized by the antibody. The major problem with ricin is that its native internalization sequences are distributed throughout the protein. If any of these native internalization sequences are present in a therapeutic, then the drug will be internalized by, and kill, untargeted epithelial cells as well as targeted cancer cells.

Some researchers hope that modifying ricin will sufficiently lessen the likelihood that the ricin component of these immunotoxins will cause the wrong cells to internalize it, while still retaining its cell-killing activity when it is internalized by the targeted cells. Generally, however, ricin has been superseded for medical purposes by more practical fragments of bacterial toxins, such as diphtheria toxin, which is used in denileukin diftitox, an FDA-approved treatment for leukemia and lymphoma. No approved therapeutics contain ricin.

A promising approach is also to use the non-toxic B subunit as a vehicle for delivering antigens into cells thus greatly increasing their immunogenicity. Use of ricin as an adjuvant has potential implications for developing mucosal vaccines.

Ricinine has some insecticidal effects on three insect pests as well as a hepatoprotective activity. Ricinine, when administered to mice at low doses has memory-improving effects. The signs of intoxication caused by ricinine can be used as chemical model of epilepsy in the screening of anticonvulsant drugs.

Read more about this topic:  Ricin

Famous quotes containing the words medicinal use, potential and/or medicinal:

    Our Indian said that he was a doctor, and could tell me some medicinal use for every plant I could show him ... proving himself as good as his word. According to his account, he had acquired such knowledge in his youth from a wise old Indian with whom he associated, and he lamented that the present generation of Indians “had lost a great deal.”
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom.
    Murray Bookchin (b. 1941)

    by Spoon Rivergathering many a shell,
    And many a flower and medicinal weed—
    Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
    At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
    And passed to a sweet repose.
    Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)