Adlyfe, Inc., a privately held biotech company, has developed a sensitive blood test for protein folding diseases that could provide earlier diagnosis of deadly diseases such as Mad Cow disease.

The test, developed by Dr. Cindy Orser, VP of Research and Development with Adlyfe, is designed to detect misfolded proteins that cause neurological diseases including Mad Cow, Sheep Scrapie and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans - all of which are fatal brain disorders. Adlyfe has 11 patents pending on the technology, which address other protein folding brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease.

Alan S. Rudolph, CEO, said the test is based on using small, synthetic peptides that mimic protein folding. The synthetic peptides detect the build up of damaging proteins in blood before they accumulate in the brain. This accumulation is correlated to brain damage, disease symptoms, and eventual death. The novel test has been under development for three years under the support of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institutes of Health. Adlyfe has demonstrated detection of prion diseases in brain tissue and blood of cattle, sheep, and humans in clinical laboratory sampling.