Adlyfe's Ligand Mimic. Alan Rudolph, PhD, of Adlyfe Inc., a Defense Department-seeded biotech company based in Rockville, MD, described another system that detects prion protein misfolding by mimicking the folding process. When the sequenced matched peptide of a ligand sees a protein folding, it is attracted and the ligand begins folding itself, causing a chain reaction of folding among other ligands. As the ligands fold, they amplify the signal, he said. The technology, he said, "allows both transduction and amplification" of the protein misfolding process.

Unlike Western blot assays, this assay does not involve a proteinase K treatment (a non-specific protease enzyme used to purify target material from contaminating proteins), is rapid and relatively inexpensive. "We are very aware that a high through-put kit is what is needed in this community," Dr. Rudolph said.

In a hamster model, Adlyfe detected prions in three weeks in what ELISA and Western Blot assays would take 10 weeks to detect, he said. It has shown statistically significant results when used on leukocytes, serum, and plasma using clinical samples from sheep, bovines, human (plasma samples from sporadic CJD in the US), hamster, monkey and mouse models. So far, he said, it has missed only one case of infectivity - from a batch of 20 bovine samples tested.