Scientists at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton publish new information on brain diseases

Scientists at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton this week published details into how molecules infect the brain in diseases like chronic wasting disease.

The research yielded surprising information about how the size of protein prions relates to their infectivity and gives scientists a target to figure out the infective nature of the molecules that cause the family of diseases called spongiforms, characterized by holes in the brain.

Led by Jay Silveira, the Hamilton scientists discovered that smaller clumps of prions – malformed proteins – were more infectious than larger groups, and that very small prion clusters were not infectious at all. The new research, published Wednesday in the science journal "Nature," reveals that the most infectious prions are significantly smaller than the large thread-like deposits of prion molecules readily seen in the diseased brains of infected individuals.

"People see big aggregates (of the protein) in people’s brains, but it looks like the small ones could be more problematic," Silveira said.

And because the general thinking for treating such diseases was to break apart large accumulations of prions in the brain, the discovery could lead to new treatment developments.

"If people want to treat these diseases, breaking up the big deposits may do more harm than good," he said.

By JENNY JOHNSON – Ravalli Republic

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