Professor Simon Hawke
|
Professor
M02 - Mallet Street Campus |
|
Biographical details
Prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jacob diseases in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or Mad Cow Disease) in cattle are fatal neurodegenerativie disorders without effective treatment. Underlying these disorders is the transformation of normal cellular protein into infections proteins or prions. Prof Hawke and his colleagues are attempting to harness the immune system to inhibit this transformation and the replication of prions. Already, they have shown that prion replication outside the brain can be substantially inhibited by passively transferring monoclonal antibodies specific for prion protein. Studies are in progress aiming to control replication in the central nervous system.