Présentation des résultats de l’Appel à Projets 2010

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Magnetic Nanoparticle Capture of Prion Infectivity

PI: Surachai Supattapone, Department of Biochemistry, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, USA
Co Investigator: Michael Miller

Beef contaminated with mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) prions has transmitted fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (vCJD) to humans. There currently exists no effective treatment for vCJD or other diseases caused by prions. Thus, there is great value in developing methods to detect, and possibly remove, prions from contaminated food or blood products.
We have identified a substance, magnetic nanoparticles, which can attach to prions and be removed by placing next to a magnet. We propose to test how effectively these nanoparticles remove infectious prion activity from contaminated blood, using mice as indicators of prion infection. Additionally, we will test if nanoparticles, by concentrating prions present in contaminated blood, can make them easier and faster to detect by the established protein misfolding cyclic amplification (PMCA) method.
If successful, we envision that all blood products would be treated with nanoparticles for prion removal, and that products and human tissue could be treated with nanoparticles to enable rapid detection of small amounts of prions.