A Useful Modification in the Preparation of Therapeutic Sera.

Abstract

There are two recognized categories of individuals who are potentially subject to acute complications incident to serum therapy. One group is composed of those naturally hypersensitive to horse protein. The other is composed of individuals who are so constituted that they become hypersensitive to horse protein on the first exposure, and henceforth react like the individuals of the first group to the injection of the horse serum. (The latter category of individuals is likely to increase in the future due to toxin-antitoxin immunization.) While accidents of this sort can be avoided by the use of therapeutic sera derived from such animals to the protein of which the recipients show no hyper-susceptibility, in practice this procedure can not be carried out because therapeutic sera are prepared in horses almost exclusively. It is evident that if the protein of the therapeutic serum could be deprived of its species specificity the difficulty might be solved. The work of Obermeyer and Pick, of Landsteiner and of others has shown that by subjecting proteins to azotization, acetylation, halogenation, or by coupling with carbohydrates or lipoids, it is possible to destroy the species specificity of proteins while imparting to them new artificial specificities. In the past these experiments were made only with the view of eliciting the interdependence between the chemical structure and antigenic specificity. Accordingly chemical procedures selected were often so drastic that they would not be applicable to the problem at hand without some modification. By excluding such procedures which are accompanied by excessive oxidizing or reducing processes, or those in which the temperature or hydrogen-ion levels are not compatible with the preservation of specific properties residing in the serum proteins encouraging results have been secured.