|
|
-
Chemistry home run
New device being developed by Jacob Petrich may change way mad cow disease, Alzheimer's are diagnosed.
- Subconsciously Jacob Petrich picks up the baseball sitting in his Gilman Hall office. He tosses it up and down, all the time talking about "hitting a home run."
The home run Petrich is talking about has nothing to do whatsoever with the sport of baseball. Instead Petrich's home run is a risky project that just might change the
way mad cow disease and Alzheimer's
are diagnosed.
"The only way to know for sure if someone has Alzheimer's is to wait until they die and then look at sections of their brain," says Petrich, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry.
The same is true for mad cow disease. Except in this case, instead of waiting for the cow to die, the animal is slaughtered and its spinal cord and brain examined.
Petrich's research group thinks it has developed a way - the home run - of not waiting until death to determine if an animal or human has a neurological disease.
The only way to get direct access to the central nervous system in both humans and animals is through the eye. Petrich's "home run" project looks at doing retinal scans of the subject.
This can be accomplished for humans Petrich says in an eye doctor's office. He hopes to develop a device that can be attached to the head of a cow or sheep.
It sounds far-fetched but don't doubt Petrich. He's the same researcher who developed a device, VerifEYE™ Carcass Inspection System (CIS), that is now used to detect feces on fresh meat, the primary cause of meat contamination. He worked with colleagues at the National Animal Disease Center (NADC) to invent the device, which is used in meat packing plants around
the nation.
"People thought our idea was crazy," Petrich said. "They said it wouldn't work, that it would give a lot of false positives. But now it's a real product, and it makes money for Iowa State."
For his latest project, Petrich is again collaborating with colleagues at the NADC. And while funding agencies haven't yet seen the potential of the project, the chemistry department chair knows it will work - at least on animals.
That's because preliminary work has been conducted by Petrich's research team on sheep and the results are extremely encouraging.
"We can tell by looking at the retinas of sheep whether the have a neurological disease or not," he said.
The importance of finding this out is high. A few years back just one cow that was found to have mad cow disease had an enormous impact on the American economy, particularly beef prices.
If Petrich's device is developed, he anticipates it taking only a couple of minutes per animal to determine if they have a neurological disorder.
As for Alzheimer's, Petrich says the nation's aging population will make early detection an important factor for this generation.
"I think it's a big deal," he said. "When a person loses his car keys or forgets something they will wonder what is going on. I think everyone would like to know if bad neurological things are happening."
Petrich is also working on a related problem in food safety that is more of a "sure thing" and that uses a similar type of technology. Currently, central nervous system tissue such as spinal cord, brains, or eyes is not supposed to find its way into meat products such as hamburger because it can potentially transmit infectious agents called prions that are responsible for mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
"We have already shown in the laboratory that we can detect very small amounts of central nervous system tissue in meat products," he said. "A device based on this technology can give confidence to the consumer letting them know that the meat supply is fine."
While the device isn't finalized, Petrich has filed invention disclosures on the technology. He hopes to be able to build prototypes of the instruments within a year or two and then look for investors to market the device.
Jacob Petrich
Around LAS
October 29 to November 11, 2007
|
|
