Abrin, one of most potent toxins known to man, is derived from the rosary pea (jequirity pea), Abrus precatorius, and is a potential bioterror weapon due to its high toxicity and lack antidotes to poisoning. Of critical importance is to understand the stability and bioavailability of abrin in matrices including food to evaluate potential inactivation strategies. Thermal inactivation of abrin required exposure to temperatures 74 °C or higher while pH treatment did not affect abrin toxicity in either an in vitro cell culture cytotoxicity assay or the gold standard in vivo mouse bioassay. Understanding of abrin would also require the development of new reagents and technologies to be able to detect the toxin with high sensitivity (low concentrations) in various food and beverages. A set of monoclonal antibodies against abrin was characterized and a capture (Sandwich) ELISA was optimized to detect abrin in buffer with an LOD ≈ 1 ng/mL ±0.15. LODs of ≤ 20 ng/mL were obtained in the detection of abrin from food matrices (whole milk, 2% milk, non-fat milk, orange juice, apple juice, and carrot juice). Additionally, one of the mAbs was able to partially neutralize abrin cytotoxicity in vitro potentially leading to new therapeutics.

Stability, bioavailability, and detection of abrin

255th National Meeting (2018)

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