Safe Jabs Thanks to Horseshoe Crabs: Making Sure Your Injection is Free of Endotoxins

Allen Burgenson, Lonza’s expert for all things testing, speaks to us about the dangers of endotoxin contamination and the future of non-animal testing for it.

“Before testing for endotoxins in the 1940s, a physician literally had to gauge the risk to your life because of something called injection fever,” explains Allen Burgenson. Luckily, we’ve come a long way since then. Thanks to advanced testing methods, one can rest assured today that any sort of injection or implant is completely free of dangerous endotoxins. Currently, the predominant mode is Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) testing, in which scientists harvest the bright blue blood of American Horseshoe Crabs and use the animal’s primitive immune system to look for clotting reactions that would indicate the presence of any endotoxins. The horseshoe crabs, Burgenson explains, survive the extraction unscathed and are safely returned to the waters in less than 24 hours. However, in a continual attempt to remove animals from the testing pipeline, Lonza’s recombinant factor C assay known as PyroGene could eventually replace LAL testing.