Inactivation of botulinum and tetanus toxins by chelators.

Purified type A botulinum toxin of about 10(6) mouse 50% lethal doses per ml was greater than 99.9% inactivated when incubated at pH 7.4 for 30 min at 37 degrees C in 20 mM 1,10-phenanthroline (PTL) or 2,2'-dipyridyl (DPD) and was 96% inactivated when incubated in 70 mM 8-hydroxyquinoline-5-sulfonic acid (HQL), but was not affected when incubated in 200 mM EDTA. When used as a representative of the chelating agents, PTL inactivated greater than or equal to 99.9% of toxicity in the culture filtrate of C. botulinum type A, B, and E strains. Highly purified tetanus toxin at 2.5 x 10(5) 50% lethal doses per ml lost all toxicity in 40 mM PTL or 150 mM DPD but was not detectably affected by 100 mM HQL (the highest concentration possible). Toxin inactivation by 20 mM PTL was completely blocked when the PTL was prereacted with an equimolar amount of Zn2+ and significantly reduced when it was preincubated with one-third its molar amount of Fe2+. DPD at 20 mM had little toxin-inactivating potency when preincubated with an equimolar amount of Zn2+ and only some of this potency when preincubated with an equimolar amount of Fe2+. Toxicity was not recovered by adding Zn2+ or Fe2+ to PTL-treated toxin. Neutron activation analysis of type A toxin showed that for each toxin molecule present, there was 1 atom of Fe, 0.4 atom of Zn, and 22 to 55 atoms each of Ca and Mg. The biological activity of botulinum toxin seems to depend on a metal component, which is likely to be Fe.