prions and immune response

[ncel]

On 20 May 1995, JARDINE P wrote:

(cut)

> Technically, if the prion is really a rogue cellular peptide, it
> would not ellicit an immune response since it would be auto-immune.
> However, if the PrP (Sc) has a different conformation from the PrP
> (C) as is speculated, would this provide sufficient epitomes of
> "foreign" appearance for the humoral system to kick in.
> This has very little to do with the nature of disease but I was
> wondering about the immunological consequence. I realize the
> amyloids appear in a priviledged site, but there's so much of it I
> assume that there must be some making its way into the lymph and
> making itself available for the old clonal selection game.
> Not really sure why I thought of this??
> Ciao, PJ Jardine
 
Good question! It has been an old enigma why none of the prion diseases 
elicit an immune response from their hosts (or fever for that matter). 
Efforts to obtain antibodies to human PrP in rabbits have been successful, 
but these cannot distingish between PrPC and PrPSc. Seems that the change 
in conformation is not drastic enough immunologically. 
Regards, Ted Diener