Researchers have developed the first vaccine that fights a mad cow-like disease in deer.
The research team hopes this new breakthrough will help not only prevent livestock from contracting the brain-wasting infection, but prevent similar conditions in humans as well, NYU's Langone Medical Center reported.
The finding marks the first successful vaccination of deer against chronic wasting disease (CWD), which is caused by infectious proteins called prions. The study could also help fight diseases caused by prions in humans, such as "creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kuru, familial insomnia, and variably protease-sensitive prionopath"; prions have even been potentially associated with Alzheimer's disease.
"Now that we have found that preventing prion infection is possible in animals, it's likely feasible in humans as well," says senior study investigator and neurologist Thomas Wisniewski, MD, a professor at NYU Langone.
CWD affects as much as 100 percent of North America's captive deer population, and concern has been raised that it could spread to livestock in the same way that Mad Cow Disease spread across the United Kingdom about a decade ago.
In the recent study five deer were given the vaccine and another six were given a placebo as controls. All of the deer were exposed to prion-infected brain tissue and housed together. The animals that received the vaccine were given eight boosters over the course of 11 months until the immune antibodies were detectable in the blood, saliva, and feces.
Within two years all of the deer given the placebo were infected with CWD, while four of the subjects given the vaccine took significantly longer to develop the infection (one is still infection-free).
"Although our anti-prion vaccine experiments have so far been successful on mice and deer, we predict that the method and concept could become a widespread technique for not only preventing, but potentially treating many prion diseases," said lead study investigator Fernando Goni, PhD, an associate professor at NYU Langone.
The findings were published Dec. 21 in the journal Vaccine.
