CELLS infected with scrapie have been "cured" using antibodies. Although the treatment has so far only been tried on cells grown in the lab, it provides a glimmer of hope that there may one day be a way to treat people with vCJD, the human equivalent of scrapie and mad cow disease. So far, 100 people have died of vCJD, and epidemiologists have warned that thousands more could yet succumb.
Charles Weissmann and his colleagues in the British Medical Research Council's Prion Unit at St Mary's Hospital, London, grew mouse cells in the lab then infected them with a form of mouse scrapie that mimics vCJD in humans.
The infected cells started to produce prions, malformed versions of a normal surface protein. It is this prion, called PrP