Comments on: First ever molecule that protects against ricin

By: Daniel Gillet

Daniel Gillet — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:15:37 +0000

The red dot showing 100% toxicity inhibition as well as the two red dots immediately to its right corresponded to false positives. When the molecules giving these nice signals in the initial screening were tested again more carefully, they came out negative. Most likely, the amount of toxin delivered to these wells during the screening was inaccurate and too low to display toxicity to the cells. This could be due for instance to a bubble in a tubing. Hopefully, such false positives were rather low among the 16,500 molecules assayed.

By: Gingerbaker

Gingerbaker — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 02:59:53 +0000

“Interesting. This could have profound health benefits in many places. One question: what about the red dot with 100% cytotoxicity inhibition at about 2000? Did it have serious side effects? Misprint?”

They missed that one. The middle-aged lady scientist from “The Andromeda Strain” was screening the red data points during that shift.

By: Sam W

Sam W — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:53:20 +0000

Sorry to be nitpicky but you say “it should be harder to evolve resistance against them.” Since the post is mostly about ricin, you should perhaps make it clear that ricin itself cannot evolve resistance against the drug! Instead, I assume you mean Shiga-like toxins produced by E.coli so actually it’d be E.coli evolving resistance … (Unless I got something very wrong?)

Otherwise I have to agree, this is an awsome discovery.

By: jdmimic

jdmimic — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:15:51 +0000

Interesting. This could have profound health benefits in many places. One question: what about the red dot with 100% cytotoxicity inhibition at about 2000? Did it have serious side effects? Misprint?