Alliance Developing Postmortem Test for Mad Cow Disease

A collaboration aims to develop a postmortem assay for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), known as mad cow disease, for use in slaughterhouses to test cattle before they enter the food chain. The alliance comprises Igen International (Gaithersburg, MD, USA) and D-Gen Ltd. (London, UK). D-Gen is a start-up company formed to develop diagnostics and therapeutics for prion diseases.

The new test will be formatted for Igen's Origen detection system and will exploit technology discovered by Prof. John Collinge, M.D., head of the department of neurogenetics at Imperial College, who directs the Prion Unit of the U.K. Medical Research Council. Collinge and colleagues were among the first to establish that a human brain disorder was caused by the same strain of prions that caused BSE in cattle. Collinge has already developed a prototype assay formatted for the Origen detection system.

"The proprietary reagents developed at Imperial College offer an opportunity to develop tests with sufficient sensitivity to meet the needs of the food industry,” said Collinge. "We chose to work with Igen as we believe the Origen technology adds an additional dimension to our reagents and will help produce a highly sensitive, robust, and easy-to-use prion detection assay.”



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