1.   Cancer breakthrough... researchers identify rogue protein.

2.   But the step is being proposed because of strong evidence that the disease can be spread through reprocessed animal feed contaminated with rogue proteins known as prions.

3.   If the rogue proteins are in lymph nodes, Gabizon said, it stands to reason that they will end up in the bloodstream.

4.   Prions are the rogue proteins that scientists have implicated in mad cow disease and its human analogue, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

5.   Prusiner pronounced that the pathogen was not a virus at all, but a rogue protein.

6.   Scott works with Stanley Prusiner, who won a Nobel prize for discovering that rogue proteins cause BSE-type diseases.

7.   The disease, thought to be caused by rogue proteins called prions, eats away at cow brains, eventually killing the cows.

8.   The finding, however, could lead to more effective ways of disinfecting surgical instruments contaminated by prions, the rogue proteins thought to cause the disease.

9.   The prion theory is quite controversial, with biologists split on whether the rogue proteins can cause disease by themselves.

10.   The researchers suspected that the rogue proteins might be altered by urea and excreted in urine as particles that would not be recognized as prions.