New botulinum neurotoxin may benefit medical conditions

Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Researchers at Stockholm University have identified the new Botulinum neurotoxin type x that has the potential to greatly expand the field of toxin therapeutics.

Botulinum neurotoxin type x, or BoNT/X, could be used in toxin therapeutics related to intracellular membrane trafficking and secretion.

"The discovery of BoNT/X facilitates the development of diagnostics and countermeasures which is important if someone would be exposed to a toxic amount of the substance," Pal Stenmark, an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Stockholm University, said in a press release.

"Within a few months we will have developed ways of detecting if a person has been subject to BoNT/X."

The study, published today in Nature Communications, describes how researchers first discovered BoNT/X from the genome of an infant in Japan who became ill in 1995.

"When we first discovered this toxin I believed we had made some error in the analysis, but after checking several times it turned out to be correct. This discovery opens a multitude of new exciting research topics that we are eager to explore in collaboration with Dr. Min Dong's research team at Harvard," Stenmark said.

The next step is for researchers to develop antibodies with the ability to detect and inactivate the toxin and how it can best be used in new therapies.