Vero response to a cytotoxin of Escherichia coli.

A cytotoxin was found in culture filtrates of a number of Escherichia coli strains that differed from the known heat-stable and heat-labile enterotoxins of E. coli. It was cytotoxic for Vero but not for Y-1 or CHO cells, and its effect on Vero was distinctly different from that of heat-labile enterotoxin. It was labile to heat and antigenically different from heat-labile enterotoxin, and membrane filtration indicated a molecular weight of 10,000 to 30,000.