Cetus Corporation

Lawrence I Greenfield

David H Gelfand

Danute E Nitecki

Walter J Laird

Frances C Lawyer

Donald A Kaplan

Anne W Emerick

Recombinant diphtheria toxin A fragment muteins which are enzymatically inactive but immunologically crossreactive with diphtheria toxin are disclosed. Intermediates and methods for preparing such proteins using recombinant techniques are also described.

Recombinant diphtheria vaccines

A novel class of polypeptides of the general formula (F-(Pro).sub.n).sub.m F, wherein F represents a flexible amino acid sequence wherein each amino acid is individually selected from the group consisting of serine, glycine, and threonine, and n is an integer from 4-8 inclusive and m is an integer from 1-4 inclusive, is disclosed. Thses polypeptides are useful in the construction of conjugates between antibodies and peptide toxins. The preparation of such conjugate toxins by linking antibodies to toxin/spacer composites prepared by recombinant techniques is also disclosed.

Toxin conjugates

Recombinant vectors which are effective in expressing DNA sequences encoding specific fragments of diphtheria toxins at high levels in recombinant host cells are disclosed. Both a fragment consisting of the enzymatically active A chain of diphtheria toxin and a fragment consisting of both the A portion and a B portion partial sequence are constructed by use of this recombinant vector.

Growing community of inventors

Albany, CA, United States of America

Lawrence I Greenfield