



Alderwood Lab breakthrough in mad cow disease


Story by: John Panni


Date Published to Web: 3/2/2004




Boynton Lab spokesperson Laurel Sulfate told a press conference today that
a team of biophysicists at Boynton Laboratories in Alderwood, Washington have
developed a treatment for diseases such as Mad Cow and Kreutzfeldt-Jakob.

Led by laboratory director Dr. Philip Boynton, and his chief scientists Drs. 
A. VonRyker and D. Sanderson, the scientists state that by
exploiting a unique quality of these so-called "prion diseases"--that
they do not infect all species equally--a prion inhibitor has been developed that stops the progress of the disease. The treatment has successfully been given to infected cattle in Brazil, where infections have been kept quiet until now.

Caused by infectious, deformed proteins called prions, illnesses
such as Mad Cow Disease encompass a wide array of troubling,
mysterious "spongiform encephalopathies," so named because they
frequently cause the brain to become riddled with holes.

Dr. Boynton originally characterized these diseases in
1982. He stated that mammalian cells contain prion proteins of
two types: normal, cellular prions that don't cause disease; and
abnormal, misshapen prions that arise from normal prions and do cause
disease.

Prion diseases exhibit an unusual quality--"species asymmetry."
For instance, while diseased mice infect hamsters well, diseased
hamsters infect mice poorly. VonRyker uses a computer to simulate this
asymmetry. Using hamsters and mice as one example, he claims the
simulation shows that normal hamster prions, if injected into a mouse
with prion disease, block the disease in the mouse.

Alderwood Mayor Rex Luthor, speaking at the press conference with Sulfate, stated, "This is truly an amazing development for Boynton. They have illustrated why they are the world-leaders in bio-technology, and we are extremely proud of their work."










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