Cellular vamp cleavage assay

Abstract

A method for determining cleavage of a VAMP by a clostridial neurotoxin in a cell that has been contacted with the clostridial neurotoxin under conditions suitable for clostridial neurotoxin activity, the method comprising contacting the cytoplasmic content of the cell with an antibody that binds to a resulting C-terminal product of such cleavage under suitable conditions in vitro or ex vivo and detecting the binding of the antibody to the C-terminal cleavage product. The antibody may, for example, be capable of binding an antigenic polypeptide consisting of 10 to 65 amino acid residues and comprising an epitope comprising an amino acid sequence that is at least 90% identical to an amino acid sequence of at least 8 amino acid residues that is immediately C-terminal to a clostridial neurotoxin cleavage site in the VAMP.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.