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Md. Company Offers Advanced Mad Cow Test

Posted on: Monday, 11 July 2005, 21:00 CDT

A Maryland biotechnology company says it has developed a new early-detection test for Mad Cow disease.

According to Rockville-based Adlyfe Inc., the test can detect the presence of Mad Cow disease before the disorder has had a chance to take its hold on the animal's brain. The test uses synthetic peptides to detect the build up of damaging proteins in blood before they accumulate in the brain, according to Adlyfe. The amount of brain damage is directly related to the progression of the disease.

The test was developed by Cindy Orser, the company's vice president of research and development and a member of its board of directors. The results will be published in the Journal of Peptides.

Adlyfe does research and development into blood-based tests for chronic brain 'wastings' diseases such as Mad Cow disease and Alzheimer's, according to the company. The privately held company was founded in 2003.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy - more commonly known as Mad Cow disease - is a chronic degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system of cattle, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Consumption of Mad Cow-infected meat has been linked to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, a fatal disorder with no known cure.

If ultimately successful, the new test would be a dramatic upgrade over current Mad Cow diagnostic treatments.

Alan S. Rudolph, Adlyfe's chief executive officer, said the test's early results show we can detect disease in blood and tissue samples from animals and humans. At the moment, the only USDA- approved test must be performed on brain tissue and be done post- mortem.

The Adlyfe announcement came shortly after the USDA confirmed the second case of Mad Cow disease in the United States. The infected cow was born in Texas and slaughtered at a pet food plant in November 2004, according to the USDA. On Friday, the agency announced it had slaughtered 29 cows from the same herd so they could be tested for the disease.

The first known case of Mad Cow in the U.S. came from a Canadian- born animal slaughtered in Washington state in 2003.

The threat of Mad Cow disease has led many countries, including the United States, to ban the importation of possibly tainted meat from certain countries. The United Kingdom's agriculture industry suffered in the 1980s and 1990s due to Mad Cow scares.

The new early-detection blood test is a result of three years of research on the part of Adlyfe, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Bethesda-based National Institutes of Health.

Besides Mad Cow, the test can also be used to diagnose similar brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease, according to the company. Adlyfe currently has 11 patents pending related to the detection technology.

Source: The Daily Record (Baltimore)

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