Quote:
Originally Posted by Lefty-Canuck
I think they could use helicopters to shoot medicated darts into them.....seemed effective in culling them.... 
How do you vaccinate against a prion?....are we going to start a camo ribbon campaign to find a cure?
LC |
I sat in on a talk with a doctor that is working on a vaccine. The way he explained it is that the prion is misfolded. What they are looking for is a specific fold that is different from normal cells that they can then engineer a "hook" that will grab that fold and would then be identifiable by the body as something that is wrong and have the bodies own defences attack those cells. But not the normal cells.
The prion works by attaching to a normal protein and causes it to fold to match the prion. They hang out in chains, folding proteins to match them. The cells are still the bodies own so the immune system doesn't recognize them.
Hopefully that made sense.
So now the peanut gallery comes out and has snide remarks. How typical. And yes I am sure elk and deer farmers would love to see a vaccine.