What The World Needs Now ... Is A Prion Killer

--Read More In: Better Living Through Chemistry | Bio-Tech | Mind/Brain | Thinking Out Loud

Now that they've been linked to some cases of Alzheimer's, we need a prion-killer more than ever.

-Hopefully one that won't kill everything else.

These odd little assassins are the things that eventually kill you in all Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases, like Mad Cow Disease, and my personal favorite: Kuru. (arrrrgggh, BRAAIINNZZZZ!!!! ZOMMMBIEEEZ; grrrrh!)

The only problem is, they are Extremely Dangerous to study and they're also very tough; -it's even hard to clean them off the lab equipment.

For example: they cannot currently be bleached, heated, or otherwise removed from any tissue, the way you can kill parasites in food by cooking it.

They can only be 'removed' by destroying their structure, either through nasty chemicals like Sodium Hydroxide or burning them to a crisp.

I don't know if that would-be prion-killer is Enbrel, as in the Alzheimer's Reversal Post, but perhaps somewhere there is a biochemical Bruce Lee sitting on a shelf at Big Pharma, just waiting to be released.

Links:
Nature   SciAm   SCFP   SFGate

Posted by Will on 03/ 3/09 | Comments (0) | Email to a friend |

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