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...U.S. herd an ideal resource for companies that extract blood and other products from cattle for use in human pharmaceuticals.
...it may not be necessary for Hematech to use prion-free cattle as it strives to make potent, disease-killing antibodies in cattle for use in humans with life-threatening infections.
Misfolded prion proteins are blamed for BSE and other, similar brain diseases. It is known that certain genetic variations make animals more susceptible to the diseases.
Prion: A disease-causing agent that is neither bacterial nor fungal nor viral and contains no genetic material. A prion is a protein that occurs normally in a harmless form. By folding into an aberrant shape, the normal prion turns into a rogue agent. It then coopts other normal prions to become rogue prions.
Prions have been held responsible for a number of degenerative brain diseases, including scrapie (a fatal disease of sheep and goats), mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, fatal familial insomnia, kuru, an unusual form of hereditary dementia known as Gertsmann-Straeussler-Scheinker disease, and possibly some cases of Alzheimer's disease.
Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of prions. See also: Prusiner, Stanley B..
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Protein infectious agent associated with several neurological diseases (scrapie; kuru; Creutzfeld-Jakob syndrome; Alzheimer's disease). Each disease has a different prion.
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prion (plural prions)
1. The etiologic agent of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. The only self-replicating cause of disease known to lack nucleic acids.
2. A self-propagating alternative conformer of any protein.
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cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk...]prion - The word, for proteinaceous infectious agent, was coined in 1982 by neurologist Stanley Prusiner as part of a hypothesis regarding ailments bearing aetiologic resemblance to those caused by slow viruses (for instance, kuru). The hypothesis has been borne out by investigation. Prions are now believed responsible for several transmissible neurodegenerative diseases
Originally posted by marg6043
The pharmaceutical empire business is to make money and profits no to find cures.