Diphtheria Toxin

Diphtheria toxin may be used as a toxin element in the construction of immunotoxin for cell-specific cytotoxicity. The translocation domain of bacterial toxins with a natural endosome escape mechanism has been used in the development of efficient nonviral vectors for applications in gene therapy.

Diphtheria Toxin from Corynebacterium diphtheriae has been used:

• for microglia depletion to study post-traumatic stress disorder in mice
• intraperitoneally injected in transgenic mice to select the hybrids after fusion of transplanted hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) during ablation
• to study its effect on eosinophil lineage-committed progenitors in an eosinophil-deficient strain of mice (iPHIL)

Diphtheria toxin is a bacterial toxin produced from Corynebacterium diphtheriae. It contains three domains that have intracellular actions. The domains are involved in the intoxication of the cell, cell-surface binding and internalization into endosomes, translocating into the cytosol across the endosome membrane and inhibiting cellular protein synthesis. Diphtheria toxin is useful in constructing biotechnological tools and therapeutics. It inhibits protein synthesis by catalyzing adenosine diphosphate (ADP)-ribosylation of the target protein in eukaryotes.

Lyophilized powder containing Tris and EDTA.

Each vial, when reconstituted to 0.5 mL with sterile distilled water, contains ~1 mg of diphtheria toxin in 0.01 M Tris and 0.001 M Na₂EDTA, pH 7.5.