Company announces new developments on ricin toxin vaccine.

2003 FEB 5 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- DOR BioPharma, Inc., announced that it has executed an exclusive option with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern) in Dallas to license patent applications pending in the United States and elsewhere pertaining to the use of novel recombinant ricin A chain mutants as vaccines to protect against aerosolized ricin.

The exclusive option covers the development of intranasal, oral, and inhalable vaccines that can be developed using the proprietary nontoxic mutants of ricin.

Ricin is the second most potent toxin known to man. It could be deployed as a weapon by aerosolization, and there is no effective antidote or vaccine approved for human use.

Ricin is described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a category B biological agent that could be used as bioterrorist weapons.

Lung damage caused by inhalation of ricin toxin is quick and irreversible. Even relatively small-scale use of ricin by terrorists has the capacity to cause widespread disruption and huge expenditures of resources to diagnose and treat ricin exposure and to clean up contamination.

The developed vaccine can be stockpiled for biodefense and used to protect soldiers on the battlefield or to protect first responders, healthcare workers, and other civilian populations, in the event of an attack in which ricin may be used.

This novel ricin vaccine has been developed in the laboratory of Dr. Ellen Vitetta, director of the cancer immunobiology center at UT Southwestern.