Paralytic shellfish poison (saxitoxin family) bioassays: automated endpoint determination and standardization of the in vitro tissue culture bioassay, and comparison with the standard mouse bioassay.

Mouse neuroblastoma cells swell and eventually lyse upon exposure to veratridine, which, when added together with ouabain, enhances sodium ion influx. In the presence of saxitoxin (STX), which blocks sodium channels, the action of the other two compounds is inhibited and the cells remain morphologically normal. A tissue culture bioassay using mouse neuroblastoma cells, developed by Kogure and colleagues, takes advantage of these principles; in this bioassay, the fraction of the cells protected from the actions of ouabain and veratridine is in direct proportion to the concentration of STX and its analogues. We have modified this bioassay, improving its convenience and speed by eliminating the need to count individual cells to determine the saxitoxin equivalents, and instead have employed a microplate reader for automated determinations of absorbances of crystal violet from stained neuroblastoma cells. When these changes and other minor technical modifications were tested in the tissue culture bioassay systematically, we found the lower detection limit to be around 10 ng STX equivalents (eq) per ml of extract ( = 2.0 micrograms STX eq/100 g shellfish tissue). Our version of the tissue culture bioassay was compared with the standard mouse bioassay using 10 acid extracts of dinoflagellates (Alexandrium excavata and A. fundyense) and 47 AOAC extracts of shellfish tissues. The tissue culture bioassay provided results virtually identical to those obtained with the mouse bioassay (r > 0.96), and moreover, was considerably more sensitive. The results gained from high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) analysis of 12 of the same extracts were less consistent when compared with the results from both bioassay methods. The automated tissue culture (neuroblastoma cell) bioassay may be a valid alternative to live animal testing for paralytic shellfish poisoning.