Effectiveness of polyene antibiotics in treatment of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy in transgenic mice expressing syrian hamster PrP only inneurons

To date very few drugs have favorably influenced the course of transmissibl e spongiform encephalopathies. In previous studies, the polyene antibiotics amphotericin B (AmB) and MS-8209 prolonged the incubation time in Syrian h amsters of the 263K strain of scrapie, but AmB had no effect against other scrapie strains in Syrian hamsters. In the present experiments using transg enic mice expressing Syrian hamster PrP in neurons only, MS-8209 extended t he life spans of animals infected with the 263K strain but not the DY strai n. AmB was effective against both 263K and DY and prevented death in 18% of DY-infected animals. The AmB effect against strain 263K was more prominent in mice whose endogenous PrP gene had been inactivated by homologous recom bination. It was unclear whether this difference was due to a change in the duration of the disease or to possible interactive effects between the mou se PrP gene and the drugs themselves. The effectiveness of treatment after intracerebral scrapie infection in transgenic mice expressing PrP only in n eurons suggested that neurons are important sites of action for these drugs .