Current Trends in Biotechnology and Pharmacy

Diphtheria is considered a serious infection occurred due to Corynebacterium diphtheriae which can able to produce toxins. This disease cause difficulty in breathing, paralysis, heart failure, and even death. The Centre for disease control suggested vaccines for adults and children for preventing the disease. The production of such vaccinesdepends on meat-based media that possess several complications. This study was motivated by the fact that the usage of semisynthetic media will prevent the side effects of meat-based media. Further few parameters like calcium chloride, iron, and iron-free L-Cystine were not deeply investigated in previous studies. In this research, diphtheria toxin has been synthesized by growing Corynebacterium diphtheriae ATCC strain in a semisynthetic medium during the shake flask stage fermentation. Hence the study attempted to optimize the parameters by measuring the optical density value through a UV spectrophotometer thereby determining the toxin expression by the Limes flocculation (Lf/mL) test. The semisynthetic medium is found to be free from animal-derived products and includes carbohydrates, water, nitrogen source, free amino acids, and iron source in initial concentration. Iron plays a vital role in affecting the production of toxins during C. diphtheria cultivation in the medium. The study obtained a high yield of diphtheria toxin with a Fe2+ concentration of 0.1g/L and a calcium chloride concentration of 11.1 g/L. Under these optimized parameters, this research could obtain effective production of diphtheria toxin.