New steriliser to save lives

New steriliser to save lives
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
University of Melbourne
Surgical tools infected with prions can cause
CJD, but currently less than one per cent of
tools are treated against them.
Image: iStockphoto Australian researchers have created a solution to deactivate prions, which are rogue, infectious proteins that cause Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) and can be transmitted via surgical instruments.

Novapharm Research (Australia) Pty Ltd, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, has developed solutions which break up and deactivate the rogue protein molecules of CJD.

The outcome is cost effective, will enable all medical instruments to be treated against prions, will not disrupt current surgical procedures and is easily incorporated into current cleaning protocols.

The importance of this is that CJD and other prion diseases have no known cure and can have a lengthy symptom-free incubation period of decades.