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Mad Cow disease may help in understanding Alzheimer's

Mad Cow disease may help in understanding Alzheimer's. Scientists believe that research of Mad Cow disease could provide clues a starting point to treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease Mad Cow disease and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease both are caused by prions

noelle-williamson
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Mad Cow disease may help in understanding Alzheimer's

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  1. Mad Cow disease may help in understanding Alzheimer's

  2. Scientists believe that research of Mad Cow disease could provide clues a starting point to treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease • Mad Cow disease and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease both are caused by prions • Prions are misfolded proteins that move from one cell to another and along the way cause other proteins to misfold.

  3. All of these diseases involve misfolded proteins •  Type 2 diabetes, • cataracts • Alzheimer's disease • Parkinson's disease • Lou Gehrig's disease • The last three involve the misshapen proteins inducing healthy proteins to deform similar to the way prions operate

  4. At the University of Pennsylvania mice were injected with a synthetic protein that resembled the misshapen proteins involved in Parkinson's disease. • The protein caused other proteins to deform and moved throughout the mouse's brain in a prion like fashion • This caused the death of important dopamine making neurons in the mice.

  5. It is believed that as we age, the process by which our cells remove misshapen proteins is slowed or damaged leading to these diseases. • The Penn team decided that the way they would try to combat these proteins was to prevent them from spreading from one cell to another by having antibodies bind to the misshapen proteins

  6. Kurt Giles, associate professor in the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of California, conducted an experiment where his team injected amyloid-beta protein (protein associated with Alzheimer's disease) into one side of a mouse's brain • After tracking the spread of the protein, he noted that it shared prion like characteristics

  7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4VrTb1DVNw

  8. Works Cited • http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324020804578151291509136144.html?KEYWORDS=infection

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