Emerging therapeutic possibilities in prion diseases: patents 1993 - 1998

Abstract

Prion diseases have attracted a great deal of research over the past decade, in part due to the unusual, possibly unique, biology of prion proteins, the agents probably responsible for their pathogenesis. Although rare, the uniformly fatal course of these neurological diseases, which occur in sporadic, inherited, and acquired/iatrogenic forms, has been a strong stimulus to the search for an understanding of their pathogenesis in the hope of developing effective therapies. Herein we examine patents registered for prion diseases over the past five years and evaluate the likelihood of their becoming clinically applicable treatments for prion diseases.

• aggregation
• amyloid
• neurotoxicity
• prion diseases