Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? (Bacterial Endotoxins Version)

摘要

Various Bacterial Endotoxin Test (BET) assays, starting with the gel clot test and working through endpoint and kinetic assays, have been used in our industry for almost 40 years, and have performed remarkably well as tools for predicting pyrogenicity in parenteral products-all of which is thanks to the horseshoe crab. To think that this simple, ancient creature can make such a difference in the quality of the world's medical supply is astounding. Dr. Frederick Bang, one of the fathers of Limulus amoebocyte lysate (LAL) technology termed this, "serendipity." Isn't that the way most great discoveries are made?The year was 1996, 18 years ago. I had the most exciting and humbling privilege of being a community advisor for a program that the local school system was hosting for fifth grade students called ExploraVision. ExploraVision was (and still is) sponsored by Toshiba, and it challenged students to pick a technology and research its past, describe its present, and predict its future. My job was to give the students an example for the expectations of the program, which I did using the whole LAL story, complete with discussions of Gram negative bacteria, endotoxin, rabbits and horseshoe crabs.