The Elimination of Horse-Serum Specificity from Antitoxins

Abstract

Summary: Digestion of antitoxic plasma or sera with the enzyme “Takadiastase” yields a refined antitoxin which has lost so much of its horse-serum specificity that it can be injected into guinea pigs which have been sensitized to normal horse serum without the appearance of any serious anaphylactic symptoms. Evidence of the actual mechanism concerned in this change in biological specificity suggests that the process is not only one of purification, but one in which the antitoxic molecule has been altered, not greatly, but enough to change its biological specificity.