New Markers for BSE in Live Cows

New blood markers for the detection of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, in living animals have been identified by Exon Hit Therapeutics (Paris, France) in collaboration with Roche Applied Science (Basel, Switzerland).

The development of a blood-based BSE test would signal a new era by diagnosing BSE-infected cows before their death and before they enter the human food chain. The routine testing of BSE is now being performed by using immunologic tests to detect the protease-resistant form of the prion protein in brain samples of dead cows.

"With regard to BSE, we are now looking for a partner to develop a diagnostic for the veterinary market,” said Bruno Tocque, president of the management board of ExonHit Therapeutics. "The confirmed presence of BSE in the United States has increased pressure on the beef and cattle industry in the U.S. to identify diseased animals before they enter the food chain.”

ExonHit has applied its DATAS RNA profiling technology on blood samples from cows provided by Roche Applied Science and has identified early pre-symptomatic disease markers. The resulting splicing markers were validated with 10 individual whole blood samples of BSE-infected cattle and 10 individual whole blood samples of healthy control animals by two different means: microarray analysis at ExonHit and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) at Roche with Roche's LightCycler instrument. Both validation setups revealed the same set of three markers that clearly discriminated between BSE-infected individuals and healthy individuals. These results were reported at the 2nd Dominique Dormant International Conference in Paris in December 2005.

ExonHit Therapeutics' core technology, DATAS, is a qualitative gene profiling technology based on the analysis of alternative RNA splicing, a key regulatory mechanism between genes and proteins. DATAS characterizes all the functionally distinct mRNA variants that differ between any two conditions (treated vs untreated), thereby providing genomic information for diagnostic and therapeutic applications.





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ExonHit Therapeutics
Roche Applied Science