A US discovery could produce a drug to counter the deadly effects of the anthrax toxin, say scientists.
Even if the anthrax bacteria themselves have been destroyed by treatment, the poisons they have produced can kill.
Experts from Harvard Medical School have found six chemicals which they believe could stop a toxin called "lethal factor" getting into cells.
In the journal Nature Structural Biology, they say that a drug could be more useful than mass vaccination.
The threat from a biological weapon containing anthrax is unknown, although estimates suggest that a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of anthrax spores released over a major city would claim thousands of lives, regardless of whether antibiotics were administered promptly.
The bacterium is dangerous because it produces a variety of toxins which, together, can penetrate human cells and kill them.
There is currently no way of tackling these toxins apart from early treatment with antibiotics - which will hopefully deal with the infection before levels of the poisons have built up in the body.
Mass vaccination
The US authorities have launched a major vaccination programme to protect an estimated 800,000 key workers and service personnel from anthrax. The UK plans to vaccinate a small number of health workers.
"
This could provide a cure for the effects of being infected with anthrax
"
Professor Graham Richards, Oxford University
The Harvard researchers, alongside others from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, used a new technique to screen huge numbers of tiny protein fragments to hopefully locate some which could latch on to the toxin and interfere with its normal working.
They found six possible candidates, which laboratory tests showed appeared to have the desired affect on anthrax toxin.
Professor Lewis Cantley, one of the leaders of the research, said: "This toxin is released within days of the initial infection and is impervious to antibiotics.
"There would be a number of advantages to taking this approach in attacking inhalational anthrax.
"Unlike an anti-serum, which would require that whole populations be vaccinated, regardless of whether or not an anthrax outbreak developed, a therapeutic combination of antibiotics and drugs wouldn't have to be used except in the incidence of actual disease.
"This approach would not only reduce the risk of side effects, but could also prove cost effective."
Shared PC power
Professor Graham Richards, from the University of Oxford, told BBC News Online that other research teams - including his own - had been working on ways to identify proteins that could disrupt anthrax toxin.
His project used "distributed computing" - in which thousands of computer users download a programme that combines their spare PC processing power to sift through vast amounts of data.
A four-week sweep narrowed down the number of potential proteins from more than three billion to 300,000 - a project that would have taken years if confined to university computers.
He said: "This could provide a cure for the effects of being infected with anthrax.
"It would be more practical than mass vaccination."
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