Thu, 24 Mar 2005

Key target for Foot-and-Mouth disease found

Lot's of ag news today - and this is another biggie. Right now, the "treatment" for a herd that contracts hoof and mouth (it's more usual, although technically incorrect name) is destruction: kill every animal, infected or not. This always struck me as wasteful, since the disease is only rarely fatal, can't pass to humans and doesn't seem to effect the meat. But destruction was the order of the day.

If this develops into an effective, non-lethal, treatment it could save the livestock industry literally millions and millions of dollars every year.

A complete picture of Foot-and-Mouth Disease's key replication enzyme could lead to the development of new drugs to control the disease without recourse to vaccination or slaughter, scientists report today. By solving the structure of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus (FMDV) enzyme named '3C protease' scientists have taken an essential step towards developing protease inhibitors, a class of anti-viral drug that has proved hugely successful in controlling HIV.

(link) [Science Blog]

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