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J. Exp. Med.,
Volume 187, Number 7, April 6, 1998 1123-1132
By


From * IRIS, Chiron S.p.A., 53100 Siena, Italy; and the Heat-labile Escherichia coli enterotoxin (LT) has the innate property of being a strong mucosal
immunogen and adjuvant. In the attempt to reduce toxicity and maintain the useful immunological properties, several LT mutants have been produced. Some of these are promising mucosal adjuvants. However, so far, only those that were still toxic maintained full adjuvanticity.
In this paper we describe a novel LT mutant with greatly reduced toxicity that maintains most
of the adjuvanticity. The new mutant (LTR72), that contains a substitution Ala
Department of Biochemistry, Imperial
College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, SW7 2AY, United Kingdom
Arg in position 72 of the A subunit, showed only 0.6% of the LT enzymatic activity, was 100,000-fold less toxic than wild-type LT in Y1 cells in vitro, and was at least 20 times less effective than
wild-type LT in the rabbit ileal loop assay in vivo. At a dose of 1 µg, LTR72 exhibited a mucosal adjuvanticity, similar to that observed with wild-type LT, better than that induced by the
nontoxic, enzymatically inactive LTK63 mutant, and much greater than that of the recombinant B subunit. This trend was consistent for both the amounts and kinetics of the antibody induced, and priming of antigen-specific T lymphocytes. The data suggest that the innate high
adjuvanticity of LT derives from the independent contribution of the nontoxic AB complex
and the enzymatic activity. LTR72 optimizes the use of both properties: the enzymatic activity
for which traces are enough, and the nontoxic AB complex, the effect of which is dose dependent. In fact, in dose-response experiments in mice, 20 µg of LTR72 were a stronger mucosal
adjuvant than wild-type LT. This suggests that LTR72 may be an excellent candidate to be
tested in clinical trials.
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