New funding for BSE research
announced this week that it will release a further £7 million
(€11.4m) to boost BSE and CJD research.
The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ( DEFRA) announced this week that it will release a further £7 million (€11.4m) to boost BSE and CJD research.
The extra millions will be used to fund 22 new BSE and CJD research collaborations. The move comes at a time when researchers from the public and private sectors across the UK and Europe are looking to develop a variety of novel approaches towards developing diagnostic tests for human and animal health.
The announcement followed a joint call for proposals and a networking meeting to encourage cross-working and debate held in Cambridge, UK last year.
The work includes five new projects to look for 'surrogate markers' to diagnose BSE or CJD. Traditionally, researchers look for abnormal prion proteins in tissue as a marker to confirm a diagnosis at post-mortem. The new projects will look for alternatives that could offer a basis for easier, reliable tests for TSEs before the onset of clinical symptoms. TSEs are diseases of the brain and nervous system which gradually destroy brain tissues. Examples include BSE and CJD, which are often referred to as prion diseases.
One study in particular will examine whether the presence of higher levels of the mineral manganese in the brain and other tissues of patients and animals, could be associated with BSE and CJD. Evidence from mice infected with scrapie suggests manganese could offer an alternative marker for disease, because levels appear to change during infection.
Sir John Pattison, Director of Research and Development at the Department of Health and current chair of the TSE Joint Funders Group said:"When we launched our networking meeting last year the aim was to spark ideas for creating novel diagnostic approaches for tackling prion disease and to encourage new interest in such research from scientists of all backgrounds.
"Through this call we're now supporting scientists from other areas of expertise who are coming to prion research for the first time, as well as the UK's leading prion researchers who are some of the best in the world.
Creative thinking across disciplines and national boundaries has allowed us to fund some interesting new ideas."
