Wheat germ agglutinin-ricin A-chain conjugate is neuronotoxic after vagal injection

'Suicide transport' is a term coined to describe the use of retrogradely axonally transported toxin to produce anatomically selective neural lesions. As a first step in developing neuron type-selective, systemically non-toxic suicide transport agents, a prototype hybrid toxin consisting of ricin A-chain (RTA) disulfide coupled to wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) was synthesized by first derivatizing WGA by reaction with N-succinimidyl-3-(2-pyridyldithio)-propionate (SPDP) in the presence of N-acetylglucosamine and then formation of WGA-SS-RTA by mixing the derivatized WGA with reduced RTA. The ability of this conjugate to inhibit protein synthesis was tested on two cell lines in vitro; the ID50 was 0.2 nM using the K562 hematopoietic stem cell line and 0.02 nM for the 2a neuroblastoma cell line. Suicide transport activity was assessed by microinjection of hybrid into the cervical vagus nerve of rats. Intact WGA-SS-RTA, but not hybrid that was pretreated with dithiothreitol to uncouple RTA from the WGA carrier, reliably killed vagal motor neurons. Both intact and reduced hybrid killed vagal sensory neurons. Indirect peroxidase immunohistochemistry demonstrated transport of RTA to vagal sensory neurons and WGA to both vagal sensory and motor neurons. These results are the first evidence that a hybrid toxin can be active as a suicide transport agent.