Botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) is the most lethal naturally produced neurotoxin. Due to the extreme toxicity, BoNTs are implicated in bioterrorism, while the specific mechanism of action and long-lasting effect was found to be medically applicable in treating various neurological disorders. Therefore, for both public and patient safety, a highly sensitive, physiologic, and specific assay is needed. In this paper, we show a method for achieving a highly sensitive cell-based assay for BoNT/A detection using the motor neuron-like continuous cell line NG108-15. To achieve high sensitivity, we performed a media optimization study evaluating three commercially available neural supplements in combination with retinoic acid, purmorphamine, transforming growth factor β1 (TGFβ1), and ganglioside GT1b. We found nonlinear combinatorial effects on BoNT/A detection sensitivity, achieving an EC50 of 7.4 U ± 1.5 SD (or ~7.9 pM). The achieved detection sensitivity is comparable to that of assays that used primary and stem cell-derived neurons as well as the mouse lethality assay.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6988902PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1087057115608103DOI Listing

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