Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Dallas Morning News Scientists have demonstrated that mad cow disease and related illnesses may one day be curable.
Mad cow belongs to a group of diseases called prion diseases.
These occur when certain proteins in the brain suddenly begin to change shape. Proteins, the bulky molecules that make up much of the body, are like paper airplanes. If they're not folded right, they don't work. Now, in test-tube experiments, researchers have created a molecule that coaxes an abnormally folded prion protein back into the correct shape. He and colleagues from a half-dozen institutions described the findings this month in the journal The Lancet .