Understanding Mad Cow Disease: SLU Receives $1.1 Million to Study Pathway into the Body

William A. Banks, M.D., professor of geriatrics at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, will study how prions – which are proteins that fold abnormally to trigger a group of fatal and untreatable diseases – get into the brain.

“Prions represent the first example of a protein that can act like an infectious agent and transmit disease,” Banks says. “Once we figure out how prions get into blood, the GI tract and the brain, therapeutics can follow. We can figure out how to stop them.”

Prion diseases affect the structure of the brain and tissue in the nervous system, causing extensive damage and ultimate death in animals and people. There is strong evidence that people can develop the wasting disease, Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), by eating beef from cows that have contracted BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) or Mad Cow disease.

Banks says his research, which will be conducted in an animal model, is important in understanding how prions get into the body to transmit diseases that wreck havoc on the central nervous system.

He also says it will help scientists understand other diseases that involve misshapen proteins getting into the brain, such as when toxic amyloid beta proteins accumulate in the brain to cause Alzheimer’s disease.

The $1.1 million grant is from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Established in 1836, Saint Louis University School of Medicine has the distinction of awarding the first M.D. degree west of the Mississippi River. Saint Louis University School of Medicine is a pioneer in geriatric medicine, organ transplantation, chronic disease prevention, cardiovascular disease, neurosciences and vaccine research, among others. The School of Medicine trains physicians and biomedical scientists, conducts medical research, and provides health services on a local, national and international level.

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